


where you might go if not for here

by radishface



Category: IZONE (Band), Produce 48 (TV), Produce X 101 - Fandom, UNIQ (Band), UP10TION, VICTON (Band), X1 (Korea Band)
Genre: Canon, F/M, Gen, M/M, Slice of Life, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2020-08-23 10:20:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 24
Words: 29,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20241256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radishface/pseuds/radishface
Summary: What happened behind the scenes of the biggest band that should have been... and never was.Most recent24 | a little ugly » seungpyo — he never wanted to say this.23 | the other cheek » whatever happened to Lee Kaeun?22 | liar liar blood on fire » seungseok — When Kim Wooseok met Park Jimin.21 | a little useless » seungpyo — It would be so easy to catch up. And yet...20 | papa » yohan’s dad — it’s not easy, raising champs.





	1. Table of Contents

**Title** | **Pairing** | **Summary** | **Era** | **Rating**  
---|---|---|---|---  
———————— | —————— | —————————————————————————— | ——————— | ———  
01 | table of contents |  |  |  |   
02 | the confession | seungyoun & wooseok | He hadn’t meant to say it right _now._ | X1 | G  
03 | more or less | dohyon, hangyul | Just some harmless gossip between two idiots. | X1 | G  
04 | push pull rattle rattle | dongpyo & seungwoo | They push buttons for a living. | PX101 | T  
05 | mending | wooseok & seungyoun | This is what guilt feels like. | X1 | G  
06 | facetime | hyeongjun & minkyu | He doesn’t know how to help. | X1 | G  
07 | about happy | seungyoun | His childhood. | pre-PX101 | G  
08 | little star | dongpyo & seungwoo | Where it started. | PX101 | G  
09 | a good life full of romance | seungyoun | What his father told him. | pre-PX101 | G  
|  |  |  |   
10 | twice on this pier | seungyoun & wooseok | Daydreams that hit like lightning. | X1 | T  
11 | stories to pass the time | hangyul & hyeongjun | Just teasing, that's all. | X1 | T  
12 | little death monster | seungwoo & dongpyo | “I love you,” he says, not meaning it in the least. | PX101 | T  
13 | thick & thin | jinhyuk & wooseok | “Of course I’m coming with you.” | pre-PX101 | T  
14 | gossip girls | minhee & junho | When your friends know too much about you. | X1 | G  
15 | finally selfish | seungwoo & dongpyo | He’s been a leader for so long. | PX101 | T  
16 | spring/summer | jinhyuk & wooseok | Where Jinhyuk watches an old friend work magic. | X1 | T  
17 | pillowtalk | seungyoun, wooseok, hangyul | What keeps them up at night? | X1 | T  
18 | little ogre | dongpyo & seungwoo | Does the ill-behaved, spoiled brat get his way? | PX101 | T  
19 | roppongi, someday | seungyoun & wooseok | This dream hits like a ton of bricks. He should have known. | X1 | T  
|  |  |  |   
20 | papa | yohan’s dad | It’s not easy, raising champs. | X1 | G  
21 | a little useless | seungwoo & dongpyo | Catching up to him would only take a few steps. And yet... | X1 | G  
22 | liar liar blood on fire | seungyoun & wooseok & jimin | When Kim Wooseok met Park Jimin. | X1 | T  
23 | the other cheek | lee kaeun | She's a good girl, and she'll wait... | post-P48 | T  
24 | a little ugly | seungwoo | The words he never wanted to say, emerge. | X1 | T


	2. the confession

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi. Here I am. And writing for X1 commences... now.

Well, crap, Seungyoun thinks.

It’s not that he didn’t mean the words, he just didn’t mean to say them right _now_, in the hallway with bags of groceries in his arms and hair barely styled and face puffy from last night’s ramyeon. Also because Wooseok is surprisingly shy when it comes to matters of the heart—or maybe it’s not surprising. Seungyoun knows himself, too—he falls too hard, too fast.

A relationship built on hanging out together basically all the time and living together and working together professionally has everything to lose. If he thought life before X1 was hard, Seungyoun these days feels like he’s constantly on a knife’s edge. Even when Wooseok is there, he misses him, wants to be with him, wants Wooseok to loosen up, go soft, melt, open up. Between the ache of wanting what is right there and always waiting for the next moment to be alone together, Seungyoun has never felt so full.

Seungyoun has been desperately thinking I love you at Wooseok since, well, if he’s being honest, since they made the debut together. He’s been doing a great job of holding back. If he says so himself.

There have been a few times where he’s come close:

Wooseok initiating text messages for the first time;

Sitting on the sidelines while Wooseok practiced his killing parts in front of the dance studio mirror (Seungyoun, had, of course, been live-texting his reactions to Wooseok’s phone, which had buzzed up a frenzy in his tote bag in the corner of the dance studio);

A selfie, no caption, no explanation, and not one posted to any fancafe or social media site, as far as Seungyoun was concerned, this one was just for him;

A Kakao exchange composed entirely of animated stickers (Seungyoun’s not sure if Wooseok was temporarily insane or just sarcastic, not that it mattered).

So what made right now different? 

They’d just come back from a morning grocery run, normal as always, just two hyungs trying to feed an army before the army roused, Wooseok digging into his tote for the keys. Behind the door would be nine hungry boys and the end to the quiet of the morning that they had just enjoyed together. Was it the way Wooseok looked in Seungyoun’s baseball cap, borrowed, was it the way his cheeks puffed up under Seungyoun’s scarf, pink from the morning air? Was it the way that Wooseok had tapped him on the shoulder as Seungyoun prepared to go out, motioning wordlessly that he was coming with?

Seungyoun had already drafted three tracks that were all about Wooseok, stowed safe in his hard drive, gender pronouns ambiguous in the lyrics, and the truth is that he’s in love. And he’s selfish, always has been, impatient, always has been. If he doesn’t say it, he’ll explode.

Wooseok’s hands close around his keys, and as he brings the keys up to the door Seungyoun reaches out and stays his hand.

“What?” Wooseok shoots him narrow eyes, blinking the sleep away still.

“I love you,” Seungyoun blurts, and braces himself for the fallout. The panic, the we’re bandmates, the you’re going to ruin everything, you idiot, the dating your colleague isn’t going to work thing, every reason Seungyoun has imagined Wooseok might reject him, and every reason he’s decided doesn’t matter in the face of how full his heart feels when he’s with him.

But he doesn’t get that.

Wooseok stares at him, eyes wide behind his glasses, the pink in his cheeks spreading, but then his hand squeezes Seungyoun’s and his shoulders seem to loosen, and he puts down the grocery bags and hugs Seungyoun the tightest he ever has. Seungyoun gives back-breaking hugs all the time, but he’s used to giving them, not getting them, nothing like this, this squeeze-the-breath-out-of-you, desperately-getting-closer, bleeding-gratitude-embrace that suddenly makes him want to cry.

“Me too,” Wooseok whispers, breath warm against Seungyoun’s ear, “but let’s just take it one day at a time, yes?” and then just as quickly as the hug came, Wooseok has threaded the key into the keyhole and stepped into the apartment. Seungyoun trips in behind him, kicking off his shoes in the entryway. A million questions whirl in his mind, _since when have you, has it always been, have you always known, _but they’re interrupted as Dohyon screeches at them from the kitchen, _the food is here_.

Wooseok plainly avoids eye contact as he cracks eggs to make an omelette. But they stay by each other’s side all day, through breakfast and cleanup and house cleaning and practice and Seungyoun is giddier than ever, more hyper than ever, to the point that even Hangyul, his trusted partner in crime, is exhausted from his antics and implores him, _shut up, hyung, please._ As they wash up that night Wooseok blows him a kiss before going to his room, entirely facetious and yet Seungyoun knows it’s not, can tell from the way that Wooseok lingers and the way his ears go pink.

Seungyoun jumps into bed that night feeling like his head is going to explode clean off his head. Tomorrow just can’t come quickly enough, and every day after that, if Wooseok means what he said.

_One day at a time. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continued in _05\. mending_
> 
> Twitter: @_radishface


	3. more or less

“Is it true?” the young trainee asked.

“Is what true,” the one with the husky voice replied.

“That Seungyoun-hyung had a threesome.”

The one with the husky voice nearly spit out his drink, a barley tea sponsored by Korea’s largest beverage company.

“Where’d you hear that?”

“I heard Jinhyuk-hyung say it to Wooseok-hyung. You’re close to all of them right?”

“Sure,” Hangyul replied, rubbing his neck in embarrassment. This was how rumors started. The kind of rumors that could get you kicked off the show. How much was the kid just pulling his leg, and how much truth was there in the question? But Dohyon’s face was the perfect blank.

“Kid—don’t go around saying stuff like that.” Hangyul hit the young trainee (lightly) on the back of the head.

“What! It’s just what I heard.”

“I’m sure that what Jinhyuk meant to say was that Seongyoun had a threesome _collaboration_. You know, with other artists.”

“Oh.” Dohyon face retained its deadpan. Hangyul didn’t blame him.

“You know Seongyoun was an idol too before, right? And that he made a lot of his own music?”

“Yeah,” Dohyun said. “He was in UNIQ, and then Luizy, and then Woodz.”

“And he was also in a professional football league in Brazil before he joined UNIQ. So do you really think he had time to fool around? If you’re already busy with rap and dance, how much time do you think he had in _his_ schedule?”

Dohyun tilted his head. “Okay, so it’s just a rumor.”

“It’s not a rumor, it’s a _misunderstanding_. Don’t trust everything your hyungs say.”

Hangyul was sure that his interpretation of what Jinhyuk had said to Wooseok was more or less on the money. But. Even as an idol-in-training, there was no reason that Seungyoun couldn’t have squeezed one (or two) romances in.

But a threesome? Hangyul was impressed. Now how’d Seungyoun pull that off?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Continued in 11. just stories to pass the time_
> 
> Twitter: @_radishface


	4. push pull rattle rattle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They push buttons for a living.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kill me now writing seungpyo is playing with fire

All at once you were madly, clumsily, shamelessly in love with one another.

Hopelessly, you might add, because the frenzy of mutual possession that might have been assuaged by your actually imbibing and assimilating every particle of each other’s soul and flesh was impossible—and everyone was always watching. So it went. It was the specter of humanity that had brought you together and it was now the same specter that would keep you apart. And you cursed it from time to time, but really you wouldn’t have it any other way.

He was Han Seungwoo, just Han Seungwoo, on screen, standing up there so tall and so handsome in his crisp suit and tie. He was Han Seungwoo trainee by the words of the trainers and he was Seungwoo-hyung to everyone else. But in your arms he was _appa_.

You were careful to trot right around the edge of absolute understanding. Some part of you knew that your love was premature, you were premature, but conscious of your fantastic power, that with one word you could destroy him, you held yourself guarded like a cat behind a fence. Your tail snaked back and forth slowly and sometimes it slipped through the netting where he could grab it and yet he’d never hold on too tight.

“Push-and-pull,” he called you, said it right in front of the camera. It was the dance you both danced. And later that night in his bed in the company of your teammates you snuck a foot onto his pillow, limp, like a giant yellow rose. You knew your bones were palpable beneath the skin, that the skin by the ankle was where it stretched the thinnest, bare bone that he’d kiss if only he had the recklessness in him.

He barely turned his head, continuing to pop bubbles or fight invisible armies on his mobile phone or whatever inane thing he was doing, and yet you knew with every fiber of your being that he was not ignoring you, could not ignore you. This was the core of your existence. _Push-and-pull_. The ultimate expression of the world you’d chosen, where you belonged.

You snuck your big toe closer, dragging it slowly, clumsily, over the tip of his ear.

“Playtime’s over, little prince,” your _appa_ huffed, and rolled off the bed.

“Leaving me?” You called out after him, dangling your fingertips over the railing, swaying like reeds in a breeze. You reveled in the power of your sun, in the sudden descent of summer hot across his cheekbones.

“Gonna shower,” he announced broadly to the whole room. You watched the muscles tense in his back as he stripped himself of his shirt, bunched it up, threw it back up to the bed, where it landed next to you, baptism by fire. You smiled a little milky smile to yourself as you let your eyes wander lazy across the Roman numerals tattooed on his back, let your eyes drift the path to the one on his chest, _don’t lock me up_, taunting you, and maybe it was meant to be too.

“Maybe Dongpyo could scrub your back?” Someone laughed, joking. You shook your head, no, nothing, nothing through a smile that was all little teeth. They knew nothing. Idiots. You said as much. But it was the last cool thing you said that night. The giddiness from the sum of your clever maneuvers was finally overtaking you. No, you weren’t swooning. It was just that your life had been cleanly laid out for you up until now.

No one was looking. Your fingers like sleepwalkers crept over to his shirt, tracing around the knot of hem. You resisted the urge to pull it over your face and inhale. Fine, it was fine. You knew what you were doing. You knuckled yourself under a pillow and kept the keen out of your throat. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, no, no, there’d be nothing to regret.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Continued in 08. little star_  
Twitter: @_radishface


	5. mending

This is what guilt feels like: waking up in the morning and feeling the sour taste of something in your mouth, something tugging heavy at your heart.

Your name is Kim Wooseok, and you made it into the group. Lee Jinhyuk did not. You thought you had been prepared for this, ever since you shot up the ranks and held, and held, and held, with or without benefit votes, with or without screen time.

Jinhyuk had to play a different game. And there was a moment where you were so sure that you would both make it, and it was when you were standing up there at the end of the second elimination with him on stage, and for a moment you let down your guard and you joked that he would always come second to your first.

Well, Jinhyuk was thirteen places away from you. If things had gone the way they did before, he would have been eleventh, and then you’d both be here.

But he’s not, so you wake up in the morning with the taste of something sour in your mouth, something tugging heavy at your heart, and you go to the gym and run exactly six kilometers every morning except for Tuesdays and Saturdays.

Today, Seungyoun is there too.

  
  
#

  
  
Seungyoun waves at you from the other side of the gym. You return with a perfunctory nod. You start up the treadmill and punch the numbers in so you’re moving at a steady 12 kilometer per hour pace. The faster you go, the faster the heaviness of morning gets left behind.

Only once you get into a comfortable pace you let yourself peek over at Seungyoun’s dashboard. He's been here for the last twenty-five minutes, going at a moderate 10 kilometer pace. As if sensing your judgment, he knuckles up the speed and throws a cheeky grin your way. You dignify his raise with a raised eyebrow of your own.

Half an hour later, Seungyoun slumps off the belt and collapses at the foot of the treadmill. You’re not about to push yourself over, either—half an hour is enough to be properly warmed up, and you’ve enough endorphins coursing through your veins make you feel light and clean. You towel yourself off gingerly and grab an extra one from the towel station.

“Here,” you say, and drop it over Seungyoun’s face.

“Thanks,” he says from under the towel. A pause. “I’m trying to get back in shape. Get a body like Seungwoo’s.”

You roll your eyes, and realize Seungyoun can’t see you.

“But don’t worry,” Seungyoun says. “I’m not going to ask you to shower with me.”

“Thank god.”

“Wanna help me up though?” Seungyoun says, lips moving the towel.

“No,” you say, and do anyway. Your hand finds his in a slick grip, and you hold on tight to his hand as you pull him up. The sun is coming in through the windows and hits Seungyoun’s collarbones. Then Seungyoun rubs the towel vigorously over his face and neck, and the sweat is gone.

“Gonna run tomorrow, too?” Seungyoun asks in between chugs of water, and then offers his bottle to you. You sip gingerly. Tomorrow’s a Saturday. It’s supposed to be your rest day.

“Yes,” you say.  
  
  


#

  
  
Seungyoun hated running on a treadmill. But it was an efficient way to get exercise, it was in the building, and it was a way to temper his energy for the rest of the day. And he got to see Wooseok in the morning, and that was nice too.

Wooseok before the cameras were turned on was Wooseok, a little quiet and reserved, a world unto himself.

Mending.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Continued in 07. about happy_  
Twitter: @_radishface


	6. facetime

He wasn’t sure what had happened to their friendship. Talking to Minkyu these days was like getting braces. Or like pulling teeth, that one time he had to have a rotten tooth pulled.

Hyeongjun swallowed. “Of course it’s busy, but even then, how are _you_ doing?“

They’d spent the last half an hour just talking, but it was mostly Hyeongjun updating Minkyu on the particulars of his life. And now that it was Minkyu’s turn, he wasn’t being very forthcoming. “Me?” Minkyu smiled into his phone camera, bland as iceberg lettuce. “You know, same old stuff.”

No, Hyeongjun didn’t know. That was the entire point of catching up. And what did “same old” mean? This was the first time he had caught up with Minkyu since the formation of X1. And for the last fifteen minutes Hyeongjun hadn’t managed to figure anything out about Minkyu’s life at all. Behind Minkyu was a blank white wall.

“Are you at home right now?”

Minkyu shrugged—it could have been a yes, a no. “It’s been hot lately, hasn’t it?”

“Are you sleeping more than four hours a night?” Hyeongjun asked tentatively. Minkyu’s dark circles had faded somewhat—he must be sleeping, or his phone camera must be making him look good, there was no way to really tell.

“Sure,” Minkyu replied.

Hyeongjun didn’t know much about Minkyu’s family. He hoped that Minkyu’s mother, at least, was a nice person. But these were some things that Minkyu never revealed about himself. All he said was that his dad was stern, like most dads, and that his mom stayed at home, like most moms. But how _stern_, and how _at home_, Hyeongjun had no clue.

For someone who was supposedly a close friend, there was a surprising amount that Hyeongjun didn’t know about Minkyu’s life. And for some reason, over the course of the show, over the course of their friendship, he’d never thought to inquire.

“How’s your family?”

“Fine,” Minkyu said. “But enough about me, tell me about the dorm.”

“What about it?”

“Well, what floor is it on? And how many of you are crammed in a room?”

“We’re on the twenty-third floor of this apartment complex near the studio,” Hyeongjun explained. “And we’re about three to a room.”

“Sounds lively.”

“Well, sometimes it’s noisy but also quiet when it needs to be. The hyungs are pretty good at making sure we’re comfortable and that we get enough rest. I guess that’s part of knowing the industry well.”

“Who’s in your room?”

Hyeongjun looked around, but there weren’t cameras in sight. He chanced a coy smile at Minkyu. “I think that’s a spoiler...”

“Is Hangyul-hyung in your room?”

“What?” Hyeongjun wasn’t sure if he’d heard correctly. 

“Is. Hangyul-hyung rooming with you?”

Hyeongjun leaned in closer to the camera, if only to see Minkyu’s face, see Minkyu’s reaction. But there was nothing there except another bland smile. Hyeongjun really wanted that to go away, wanted it to disappear from this world. Who was Minkyu before all of this?

“Well, sometimes. I mean, we’re not _literally_ tied to our bed assignments. It’s not the military.”

“That’s interesting,” Minkyu said, and he sounded miserable.

That was it, he sounded miserable. Hyeongjun steeled himself. Some time had already passed and Minkyu hadn’t picked himself up yet. This wasn’t like the Minkyu he knew, the X class trainee with the bright smile and the kind word for everyone, the one who picked up others, who didn’t think about himself. Hyeongjun swallowed. Maybe Minkyu’s situation had gotten worse after the show had ended.

The thought was unbearable. _I wish you were here,_ Hyeongjun thought. _At least then I could comfort you._

“What?”

From the look on Minkyu’s face, Hyeongjun realized he’d said it out loud.

“I’m sorry,” Hyeongjun blurted. “I didn’t mean to make you—” _feel bad,_ he almost said, but trailed off—Minkyu’s face had gone even darker, and it was Hyeongjun who had put it there. 

“I have to go,” Minkyu said, and there was the smile again, bland and frozen. “Let’s talk soon, okay?”

The call turned off before Hyeongjun could say anything else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Twitter: @_radishface


	7. about happy

Even as a baby, it was obvious that Cho Seungyoun was pretty good at a few things: screaming at the top of his lungs, running, and getting up after falling on his face. When he was eight, his mother sent him away to football camp to channel his excess energy, but even when Seungyeon came home he’d still be bouncing and kicking the ball around.

“Seungyoun-ah,” she’d used to yell at him, “do that stuff in the backyard!”

The Chos were wealthy, thanks to some well-placed investments in real estate a few generations ago that bore fruit as the South Korean economy rose up from its postwar ruins. This meant that Seungyoun, unlike many of his peers, enjoyed a big, grassy, American-style backyard. Wealth, and easy-going parents, can make a lot of things easier, but can also make some things harder.

“Seungyoun gets to practice at home,” they’d say. “His family is rich, so they hire him all kinds of coaches. I heard one of them is a former Olympic athlete.”

As Seungyoun surpassed the others on his team in football, they grew to envy the ease at which he dribbled and scored, and the fancy moves he could make that they couldn’t yet.

“His cleats are always the top of the line. I hear his shoes cost him two hundred thousand won.”

“Seungyoun has expensive gym clothes. I hear that his parents know the CEO of some sportswear company in Japan.”

“It’s unfair,” they said. “But without all those things, do you really think he’d be as good?”

It was true that his mother spoiled him with high-end soccer gear. But it didn’t matter that Seungyoun didn’t care what he wore or that he didn’t have a special coach. What mattered was that people knew his family was rich, so they made stories out of that. And even though Seungyoun made himself a fool intentionally outside of football, so as to seem harmless and likeable, the rumors and whispering of an unfair advantage continued, and Seungyoun grew up not really sure if he had any friends who didn’t envy him in some way.

“Never mind that,” his mother said. They were at the mall, and just walked out of the sporting goods store with another two pairs of football cleats— one in a bright, electric green and another in a deep red with stoplight-orange soles. She had once dreamed of being a fashion designer, but the family business was real estate and so here she was, the fourth highest paid realtor this side of Seoul. “You do what you want.”

By the end of his middle school years, Seungyoun was good enough to make the national finals. Through a scout, he learned of a training camp for high-potential football players. With “you do what you want” ringing in his ears he sent along videos of his last matches and then that August he was on a plane bound for São Paulo.

He’d be back in Seoul not long after,; a little older, a little sadder, a little tanner, and onto the next thing with equal gusto. “Go for it,” his mother said, whipping out the credit card. Airplane tickets, new shoes, hats shirts food everything. And his father—

His father, always traveling. Busy. Barely at home. Didn’t really know what Seungyoun was up to. Bland smiles and bland pride all around when he was home, bland questions, so Seungyoun smiled harder through it to make his point, yes he really was doing well, yes he really was happy, everything was great. So his father always thought Seungyoun was doing great. Never had any reason to believe otherwise. And wasn’t Seungyoun? He was having the time of his life: achieving all of his childhood dreams, to be a soccer player, a music maker, a pop star, appear on TV, wearing fine clothes with fine hair while singing fine music. So was Seungyoun happy? Yes? Great.

Maybe his dad had another family. Maybe. Could be possible. He was away a lot. But Seungyoun didn’t want to think about it. There wasn’t time to talk about it, either, not that this was the kind of thing to be talked about. His dad was home maybe once, twice a week in those early days of living. And when he was home, as long as Seungyoun was happy, that was fine.

“Seungyoun’s a good kid,” his dad would say, very blandly, before another one of his month-long trips. “He understands.”

Happy was fine, fine was happy. But like this, they would run out of things to say. So occasionally they watched TV together. Dramas, music videos, movies, anything really. Afterwards these things were the only thing they could talk about with any gusto. So when the conversation got low Seungyoun flipped through the channels in search of the next thing. Sometimes just a little too fast.

“Ach,” his father would say, half annoyed, half good-natured. His father never wanted to start anything. “You’re always so fast, Seungyoun.” And Seungyoun beamed. He was fast, wasn’t he? How true. “Slow down, and let’s find something nice to watch.” And like some kind of automaton Seungyoun would grin and bear it and his finger would slow its incessant, neurotic press on the channel button.

_See? I’m a good boy._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continued in _09\. a good life full of romance_
> 
> Twitter: @_radishface
> 
> P.S. Omg the trailer for X1. That editor needs a promotion. Yohan’s athleticism is the pride of Korea. This concept is the best concept I’ve ever seen, everyone looks so good, I can’t wait for next week, etc. *activate writing frenzy*


	8. little star

“You’re cute, Son Dongpyo,” is a refrain he’s always heard.

Every member of his family can’t stop emphasizing it. And it’s true, objectively speaking. With his button nose, big, black eyes, small face, rosy cheeks, and thick pout, Son Dongpyo has always been able to grin, sass, and duck his way out of trouble, into opportunities, and get any help he’s needed.

Training to be an idol is fun, but there’s a part of Dongpyo’s world that doesn’t get to be on camera, which he hasn’t figured out how to turn to his advantage yet. There’s a fine line between friendly skinship and coming off desperate or even worse, pervy. He knows youth is on his side, which means, a la Yoo Seonho of Season 2 fame, he’s perfectly entitled to glomming onto whatever older hyung he can set his eyes on. But the trick is to appear cute and unromantic, harmless and doting, sweet without being saccharine.

During the initial auditions, Dongpyo scans the incoming crowd for a likely candidate. There are a few candidates, handsome but still young, young but not old enough, old enough but not charismatic enough—Dongpyo is already tired. He begins to think that there’s nobody worthy except the Representative. So as the trainees go one by one for their auditions, Son Dongpyo nurtures his tiny crush on the Representative. 120% harmless, really. Lee Dongwook is, after all, an A-lister. Dongpyo is just some talented up-and-comer sassy pants. And Lee Dongwook is way out of Dongpyo’s league, but whatever, it’ll be cute. Dongpyo will flirt with the representative every chance he gets. His youth naturally guards him against appearing too shameless. But best to nurture the crush a little so that the interaction feels genuine. That’ll be his one-way ticket to the big time.

And then Seungwoo enters from stage right, and all of Dongpyo’s plans go flying out the window.

  
  
#

  
  
You’ve always been invited to parties, study groups, outside dance practices, to many would-be girlfriends’ homes for dinner at the behest of their parents. As the show goes on, your rank climbs and climbs. It doesn’t surprise you, nor does the fact that you are nominated the leader at every turn: you’re older, after all, you’re debuted, and even though Victon didn’t do well that doesn’t reflect badly.

Produce X 101 is no different than military boot camp might be for someone with the same temperament on the path of a normal life. But what is different here from the military lies in that everything is televised, and that all of you, like your audience, are encouraged to look, assess, judge, and to have your favorites.

When Son Dongpyo fires his first wink at the camera, he has no idea how your breath catches ever so slightly. When Son Dongpyo tells Lee Dongwook he's trying to seduce him, Dongpyo has no idea how that makes you, for all of your failed idol, dashed dreams, feel like trying again. Some tiny spark lights up in a corner of your heart that you didn’t even know was dark, and now you’re fully awake.

With the audition for center successfully concluded, it is more or less de facto that Dongpyo is the baby of the group: to be doted upon, spoiled as much as possible, encouraged beyond his limits, the catch-all for the bubbling love and attention that exuded from the skins of some desperate one hundred something young men.

Or maybe that’s just the way you feel.

At the start of the group evaluations, when Dongpyo calls your name and then again so that you’re in the same group, you’re happy. As simple as that. You’ve been plucked from a sea of anonymity, seen and named. It means that Dongpyo has been watching you, too. You stand very still as Dongpyo makes the rest of his picks, fixing your gaze on some undefined point at the other end of the hotel ballroom. This way you won’t be caught looking at the back of Dongpyo’s neck, expression plainly naked, wondering what kind of personality really lives beneath aegyo personified, who Dongpyo really is.

You know that you’ll come to know these things in time.

“Hungry, hyung?” Byungchan calls out to you as you get up for thirds. Lunch is catered sandwiches, and you’ve been eating so quickly, mindlessly, that you haven’t realized how ravenous you’ve been. You flash a beatific smile at Byungchan and head to the lunch counter to ask for an extra ham and cheese. The assistant is no match for your grin, and stuffs more than one sandwich into your arms. Successfully secured, the sandwiches are brought back to the BOSS group, where the team tears eagerly into the catch—except for one person.

“Dongpyo,” you say, rescuing one from the pile to offer his way.

“I’m watching my weight,” Dongpyo tosses his head.

“You’re perfect,” you say quite seriously. And as Dongpyo reels in embarrassment to the soundtrack of hoots and hollers, you raise the ham and cheese sandwich a little higher. “Eat a bit more, please?”

The way Dongpyo looks at you then — flushed ears, eyes peeping out between his fingers — he resembles a red fox in snow. Calculating, assessing, except it isn’t a rabbit or food which is the object of scrutiny, but your sincerity. You hold your breath.

After an eternity, Dongpyo snatches the sandwich out of your hand. Rolling his eyes, he peels the wrapper open. “All right, dad.”

Dad.

It’s a start. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Continued in 12. little death monster_  
Twitter: @_radishface


	9. a good life full of romance

Dramas made his father tear up. Seungyoun found this endlessly fascinating. He had no patience for them, preferred cartoons and comedy, but his father watched them with quiet reverence. When Seungyoun probed, really, because dad was leaving again tomorrow for two weeks, his dad said,

“There are only a few things in life that are really good, Seungyoun-ah. One of them is finding someone you really love. Live a good life, full of romance. That will make you happy.”

He replayed that line often in his head over the years, pulling the words apart and examining them under the microscope of his mind, as if quantum truths would be revealed; but Seungyoun was never sure if his dad meant his mom.

Dad would come and go. And like that, so Seungyoun moved onto the next thing, too:

English in the Philippines, a stint in the U.S. with a distant uncle, then back to Seoul, to singing, to dancing, anything that worked off the excess energy, the frenetic pace of life barely contained under his skin. And so he continued this way: Seungyoun running full speed ahead, his mother always behind his back, his father—

Seungyoun was supposed to be good at screaming but no words came to him when his dad died. He never got to tell his dad the truth, or maybe it was that he never got reality to catch up with what he pretended it to be; his dad lived in a bubble that Seungyoun had created with his happy silences, and now he was gone.

Many relatives came to the funeral, but there were even more colleagues. “Your father was a great man,” they told him. “He created so many opportunities for people.” Vice presidents and directors, all wearing the same kind of boxy black suit and wire-rimmed glasses and stiff gelled hair, a mile of distant uncles that Seungyoun had never met and would never care to meet again. He left early.

So began Seungyoun’s long and unhappy year of running; for once, not to anything, but away, away, as far away as he could, all the while wondering when he’d pick himself up, by what mechanism it would be possible to do so, and if he really trusted himself to do so or not. He fell in with a few girls, Jimin one of them. He bribed the security guard to look the other way as he dragged her to go ice skating at the deserted shopping mall rink at 2 in the morning, bought seventeen orders of French fries and built a model train station with them right there in the foyer so she’d smell them before she saw them—she called him weird, the weirdest person she’d ever known. If only she had known that he did these crazy things to make her laugh so he wouldn’t cry.

Before they broke up, Jimin had asked him why he couldn’t sit still. Seungyoun had a long time to think about it. He bounced around because he moved around too much as a kid. He bounced around because he had a mother who, out of guilt for wrenching him from place to place, wanted to give him the world. He bounced around because he was looking for his dad. He bounced because the world was too big and there was only one of him.

July 19th of 2019 came and went. Lee Dong Wook called his name with all the gravitas of God creating the universe, and Seungyoun walked down the narrow bridge from one end of the stage to the other, climbed the staircase to his appointed chair, and for about twenty five minutes, felt a blessed calm descend over the quantum chaos of his mind. He finally had what he wanted since he had moved back to Korea.

Twenty five minutes after the calm had descended, he was walking back down the aisle the other way and the terrible thoughts crept in: all these people would be stuck with him for the next five years and they’d find out who he really was. They’d know that there was no end to his desire, that he was just a parasite, a leech-sucking leech, lower than a worm. They’d realize, sooner or later, that Seungyoun saw them all as expendable, that he was the worst kind of person who just wanted to be liked, a simpering sycophant, that he was a person with no home in himself. That anyone who fell in with him would fall endlessly.

Confetti rained down from the rafters. Seungwoo fell into step next to him, face wet with tears. Ahead of them, Wooseok was wiping his face with his sleeves.

Seeing this, Seungyoun started to cry too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Continued in 10. twice on this pier_  
Follow on Twitter: @_radishface


	10. twice on this pier

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daydreams like lightning.

After your respective workouts, one of the two showers is occupied by a singing Han Seungwoo, who based on the length of the song he is currently singing and the pace at which he is singing may not be out of the shower for another forty five minutes. You have places to go and things to do and do not want to stand around sticky and gross but Seungyoun looks even stickier and even grosser than you. So you offer the remaining shower to Seungyoun, and he offers it right back to you. You want to, maybe it’s because Han Seungwoo is in the shower, offer to shower together. But you don’t trust yourself to sound flippant enough.

Seungyoun goes in; he promises you he’ll shower quick. The door closes behind him without locking and you hear him twist on the tap, the water gush from the shower head and you think if only you had the recklessness to turn the handle, slip a bare foot in, to know the warmth of his toes.

The thought catches you totally off guard, like a baseball bat striking nothing with such speed that the crack against the sound barrier knocks you clean out of thin air. 

You hightail it out of the kitchen and onto the balcony, where you drink water and drink in the smoggy air until you feel like your stomach and lungs are about to burst. Out here, as the sun comes up above the horizon and swathes the sky in a pale yellow, you are safe in your own thoughts, with nobody to the wiser to your thoughts, the deja vu that’s descended upon you like a fog:

Some time in the future, Seungyoun will show up at your apartment dressed in black and blue, hair styled jauntily, and he’ll tell you that you need to come out for a night on the town, right away. Get dressed up fast, time’s-a-tickin’, there’s a night to conquer. It’s been the first time you’ve seen each other in four years, or maybe you’ve been together every day. Doesn’t matter. What matters is how alive Seoul is at night and the dizzying, electric gasp of it, the way Seungyoun slips his hand into yours on the elevator ride down, the way he slides a hand down the small of your back. You feel precious, possessed, _don’t even think about leaving,_ voice light and playful in your ear but he means it and that sends a glissando up your spine. You don’t want to inconvenience Seungyoun, so you stay.

You reach the club at half past eleven and tuck into the bar, tuck into each other’s shoulders and sneak glances at each other as you get progressively tipsier. You watch the pulsing throng of boys and boys and girls and girls grind up against each other in sweaty abandon. It has everything to do with you and nothing at all; here you’re in your own world and for once, you’re not the ones performing. Grand.

You stay out much too late and miss the trains home, so you walk along the Han where the boats float alone and one couple is pressed face to face on top of each other on the grass under the balmy moon. Right as you reach the point where the tourist trap restaurants and bars end and you are surrounded by nothing but greenery and the hard concrete beneath your feet, Seungyoun pulls you around the corner and down the end of a small, lonely jetty. Just beyond you on the other side is Gangnam, across the river, blazing with lights that halo like Van Gogh’s stars. You duck your head into Seungyoun’s shoulder, you are feeling swirly and looking out on the water that feels big and lonesome and you just want to let yourself feel sleepy. You ask in a coy voice what was it that was so important that Seungyoun had to drag you out on a quiet Saturday night away from your cats and you filing your nails mindlessly and your mindless television.

"Do you know what the word 'opportunist' means, ‘Seok?" Seungyoun says, the word “opportunist” in English.

"Someone who takes advantage of others?"

In reply, Seungyoun will reach up and run his fingers against your chin. You’ll step backwards and hit the railing of the pier, until you find you have nowhere to go except over into the neon river, or into Cho Seungyoun’s kiss.

You choose—

“Wooseok,” someone says. You turn around slowly, hoping your face doesn’t betray you, hoping you’re as cool as ever, hoping no one knows. Safer this way.

“It’s your turn.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continued in _13\. thick and thin_  
Twitter: @_radishface


	11. just stories to pass the time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> just teasing, that's all.

The scent of fresh orange filled the kitchen when Hyeongjun got back to the apartment from a photoshoot. Hangyul was leaned over the kitchen island, painstakingly peeling an orange in one unbroken spiral.

“Hello, Hyeongjun,” came the serious voice.

Hyeongjun plopped his bag, laden heavy with clothes , straps straining under the weight, to the floor. He then plopped himself down in the chair across from Hangyul, sighing deeply. A few minutes passed before he noticed what Hangyul was doing.

“What are you doing?”

Hangyul unzipped another filament from the orange. “Making perfect orange peels.”

Hyeongjun grabbed another orange out of the fruit bowl, and ripped the peel off in great chunks, stuffing a segment into his mouth. “Just eat it.”

“It’s worth it,” Hangyul said quietly. “Have to put some care into something if you want to do it right. The end result looks pretty and tastes good, too.” Hyeongjun slumped in his chair, shooting Hangyul a curious look, and concentrated on eating his own orange.

Hangyul went patiently, thread by thread. Hyeongjun watched out of the corner of his eye. Hangyul’s fingers were delicate for such a masculine person. It only took a few minutes for Hyeongjun to soften and relax and watch Hangyul work, rapt, all the while sucking on his own (clumsily-peeled) orange segments.

When Hangyul was done, from his hands emerged a soft, smooth-looking orange — perfect in every way. Fibers all gone, flesh plump and hinting at a juicy interior, yet completely intact. As foreign and naked an object as anyone had ever seen.

Hyeongjun swallowed. “Never knew you had that much patience,” he said. There was something like awe in his voice. Hangyul recognized it for what it was and smirked.

“Patience is hard,” Hangyul shrugged, reaching for another orange. “But focus comes easy for me.”

For some reason, Hyeongjun had to cross his legs.  
  
  
#

  
When Hangyul strutted through the door, Hyeongjun was stretched out on the sofa, bare feet hanging off the end, reading a thick book. Hangyul flashed a blinding grin at him, who just shot him a sullen look in response and ignored him.

“May I?” Hangyul hovered over the couch, and Hyeongjun reluctantly made way for him to sit down.

“You look like you’ve,” Hyeongjun started, wanting to chastise Hangyul for what was obviously a barely-masked date with some fan. Everyone in the house knew, and yet here was Hyeongjun, the dumb one, staying behind to wait for Hangyul while everyone went out for dinner. “Manager was asking about where you went. If I have to cover for you one more time—“

Hangyul’s lips twitched, and he scratched his stomach. “How would you know, ‘Jun-ah?”

“Because you’re, you’re,” Hyeongjun’s face reddened. He could _smell it_. “It’s just obvious, okay?” Hangyul tried to look him in the eye, but Hyeongjun turned his head away and refused to meet his gaze.

Hangyul just looked at Hyeongjun for a long moment. That appraising look like he was sussing you out, figuring you out, all the while looking like he was holding something back. He looked at Hyeongjun until Hyeongjun started to squirm under the intensity. Then Hangyul leaned closer.

“Wanna know what it’s like?”

Hyeongjun nearly dropped his book. “No thank you,” he managed in a thin voice.

Hangyul just looked at him, his eyes glinting. “Wanna know what it feels like to be with a girl?”

Hangyul couldn’t believe what he was saying. Contrary to public opinion and his looks, he was actually more than a little shy when it came to stuff like this. But the look on Hyeongjun’s face, desperately interested while pretending not to be, was like the first hit of the best drug in the world. Hangyul swallowed, and pushed a little farther. “Wanna know what happens when she gets excited?”

“No,” Hyeongjun whined, his cheeks aflame. “Oh no—”

“You kiss her real slow and don’t touch her anywhere else, not hard anyway, until she starts to push and grab at you and moan. That’s when you know she’s ready.”

Hyeongjun squirmed on the couch, ruddy patches rising on his cheeks. Hangyul thought had just meant to embarrass the other boy, but something else was happening. The air was thick and bouncy.

“And if you really want to make her lose her control, you gotta lick her.”

Hyeongjun’s eyes went wide, the tip of his tongue darting out unconsciously. “_Lick_ her?” And the scandal and awe in Hyeongjun’s voice suddenly made Hangyul’s pants feel a little tighter than usual. He ignored it.

“Sure,” Hangyul said, leaning in conspiratorially. “And when you do, they’ll grab your hair. Make these little sounds. If you do it nicely, they’ll be begging.” Hyeongjun shifted in place. Hangyul knew, just knew, he was making room in his pants, trying to hide the fact that he was, he was—_affected_ by what Hangyul was saying.

“Like… how?” Hyeongjun’s face was bright red, but he didn’t look away in embarrassment. The combination of innocence and boldness hit Hangyul like a freight train.

“Like—‘oh god, oh please, don’t stop.’” Hangyul rubbed his hand on his thigh, palms sweaty. Hyeongjun’s pupils were huge and dark.

“They don’t actually say that, though?”

Hangyul leaned in a little closer, swiping his tongue over his lower lip in his unconscious habit. Hyeongjun’s eyes darted down to watch, transfixed. “They do to me.” Hangyul couldn’t help the cocky smirk, and Hyeongjun’s nostrils flared wide. He was trembling so hard Hangyul could feel the vibration through the cushions.

“You—”Hyeongjun started, and then clapped his hands over his mouth, jumping up from the couch to pelt into his room.

Seungyoun poked his head in from the kitchen. “Hangyul, are you giving our precious poodle a hard time again?”

Hangyul just grinned, and thought, _you have no idea. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Their debut was so good omg
> 
> Twitter: @_radishface


	12. little death monster

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I love you," he mouths, not meaning it in the least.

Dongpyo, concerned about his burgeoning masculinity, is one of the funnier things you’ve seen in your career.

“I can’t,” he cries in front of the trainers. And his fellow _Believer_ teammates are supportive, they are nothing but good to him and yet your Dongpyo is still crying like this. You have been here before and it is a well-known rite of passage for all men, this concern about burgeoning masculinity and when it will hit. There is something touching and nostalgic and funny about watching it happen to Dongpyo now when it happened to you eight years ago.

It won’t do to tell Dongpyo that time will take care of this particular detail, that Dongpyo will inevitably become a man, that he’d have his whole life to explore what being a man is.

“You wouldn’t understand,” Dongpyo wails, striking and beating his fists against your chest. “You’re tall and you’re handsome and you know how to be sexy and I don’t and I can’t, I’m short and I’m ugly and I’m too young.”

You must hold your tongue. You must, because if you tell Dongpyo that it is his very youth and the inevitable slow decline of it that makes sexiness what it is, if you tell him that what makes one sexy is not a particular face or a body type or height or what clothes a stylist puts on your body, but the ability to reveal oneself while hiding oneself, that it is what thrills a seeker and makes seekers of those who weren’t even searching to begin with, if you told Dongpyo not to worry because you could tell he had all the potential in him to become exactly what he wanted for himself, then wouldn’t it really be all over for you?

You are not going to be the one who tells him. No, no, no. So what you say, instead, is, “you can always tell me what’s in your heart, and what’s on your mind.” And he looks at you, silent, pleading to be understood. “Tell me so I can help,” you say. _Tell me so I can know you. Tell me because I’m already listening, my whole being is radiantly tuned to your signal, every smile, every frown, every tear, ever dimple, every laugh, I want to know you so well that I can protect you from anything, I want to know you so well that I forget myself, I want to know you so well that I become you, and then maybe then you’ll know me and know that I am you and all that I ever was was just an empty container waiting for you._

Dongpyo cries into your chest, beats at you, calls you names not worth repeating, and at the end he turns and apologizes sweetly, says you’re the best, pets your hair prettily, asks if you hate him, says you must hate him now, cries again in despair at the thought of you hating him. How could you hate Son Dongpyo, ever? Frail in your arms, thin as a bird as the show drags on, despite how many sandwiches and extra servings of cafeteria food you make him eat, he’s still your baby bird, you’ll never hate him. You enfold him into your arms and revel, enthuse, bask in wanton abandon at the way he collapses into you, exhausted from the whiplash of wanting to grow up faster, his surrender so absolute and so giving that you in a flash understand why it is the path to salvation: clouds paring, angels singing, bodies ascending, you give into to the feeling of fullness: the heavy warmth of Dongpyo’s head against your chest, the feeling of his ear, a pale, pink shell crisp in its edge and skin so soft like a baby’s, presses against your ribs, seeking your heartbeat.

That your heartbeat could be enough to comfort another, that your warmth would be enough to surrender into, you wonder at the immersive, expansive sadness blossoming in you before you realize it is gratitude, omniscient in breath, bigger than anything you’ve ever felt:

_Thank you eomma and appa for giving me this body with which I can protect, shield, and comfort my friend, thank you for my eyes with which I can see my friend’s despair and his joy, thank you universe for failing Victon so that I could be here right now so that I could meet Son Dongpyo. Thank you Dongpyo’s eomma and appa and grandmothers and grandfathers and ancestors for bringing such a wonderful boy into the world, a star that shines so brightly that even a somber fool like myself can be seen and saved, I am found and I am here._

“Dongpyo plays push-pull sometimes,” you tell the camera with a bland, embarrassed laugh that only touches upon the surface of reality, and Dongpyo winks in your direction.

_I love you, _he mouths, lips pink and shiny and not meaning it in the least, soundless words floating across the stage cutting you as sharp as the snap of a whip. What a farce, what a game for the public, what a secret, what a thrill. You hide behind your bangs, your brain about to burst, with every step you take to your seat I love you and as you sit down I love you and as you sit there, wooden, waiting for the rest of the names to be called, I will love you after I die, so let me love you as you are letting me now and I will be the happiest on earth, make you the happiest on earth.

Dongpyo gets called five spots after you, and he flashes you a peace sign as he climbs to his seat.

Death of you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continued in _15\. finally selfish_.
> 
> Twitter: @_radishface


	13. thick and thin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Don’t worry,” he said, after he was done giggling to himself. He wiped a tear from his eye. “Of course I’m coming with you.”

It didn’t escape Jinhyuk that a good, old-fashioned mentor/mentee relationship was a well-known advantage on Produce, not to mention an actual advantage for staying sane. And so Jinhyuk found himself gravitating toward the second youngest on the show: Jinwoo, innocent, continually terrified, and when he was at ease, completely adorable.

It lasted for a while. But youth on its own, could not titillate, and when U GOT IT team won by a narrow margin, Jinhyuk was relieved and sad at once. It meant that the public taste was skewing older, which it had been for the last decade as boy bands and girl groups flourished and teens grew into adults and still remained fans, but which meant that relatively young Jinwoo wouldn’t make the group. True to Jinhyuk’s prediction, Jinwoo didn’t make the second culling.

He remembered how Jinwoo cried later, how Jinwoo asked in between sniffles, in a little voice after the crowd of boys stopped hugging him and when it was just Jinhyuk walking him out to the dorms to help him pack up, why he didn’t make it, what did hyung think? Jinhyuk wondered if it was because he didn’t push Jinwoo hard enough. But he also hadn’t done anything because Jinwoo was also too young to know what his aspirations really were. It wouldn’t do to use him to explore some part of himself that wasn’t ready yet. All things would come in time.

There was such a thing as saving your heart to be broken at the right time, by the right event, by the right person.

“That’s poetic,” you said then, peeling a face mask out of its packaging. It was past midnight and you’re both still up, still wired from the culling even though you were both safe. “But do you think there’s really a way to control something like having your heart broken at the right time?”

“Isn’t that what the job of a parent is?” Jinhyuk said. “Providing a controlled entry into the heartbreaks of the world for their kid. That’s what a good parent does, anyway.”

“You think your parents did a good job of it?” You keep your voice light.

“Not bad,” Jinhyuk replies, hand coming over his heart by instinct. “Could have been better.”

“Mine too. So don’t beat yourself up too much over Jinwoo. You did your best.”

The words are meant to be comforting, but you could tell Jinhyuk’s eyes still went hot. He didn’t need to blame it on the spicy noodles for you to cross the room, give him some space.

After your morning warmup run, Seungyoun is teaching you how to use the rowing machine (“_if you want broad shoulders like me, you’re going to have to build out the muscles across your whole back_”), when he out of the blue asks you if you miss him.

You know exactly who he’s talking about. “What kind of a question is that. Do you miss your old UNIQ members?”

It stings, this barb, and you didn’t meant to be defensive, but honestly, who does Seungyoun think he is?

“Just that—you haven’t mentioned him at all lately.” Seungyoun, undeterred by what you’re sure he’s attributing to your morning crabbiness and muscle soreness from your workout yesterday, gently guides with his fingertips your elbows back to face the mirror. You curse under your breath. Your form is usually perfect. “So how’s he doing?”

“He’s fine,” you say, and exhale sharply.

“His campaign in Vogue looked good. Who knew that our resident uncle could throw looks like that for the camera? But I shouldn’t be surprised—he probably learned how to give face from you.”

You snap your elbows in before Seungyoun can touch you again. “What’s my count?”

“Seventeen,” Seungyoun says, finally taking the hint. You don’t want to talk about Jinhyuk. Not with him. “Three more to go and then a water break. C’mon, push it out.”  
  


#

  
You and Jinhyuk hadn’t been close right off the bat. Not that you had been close to anyone. You were the perfectionist, the star performer, and it was everyone else who couldn’t keep up with you, _mediocre, banal, uninspired, insipid_. Everybody lived in constant fear of being disparaged by the shakes of your head and the roll of your eyes and for a while you were as a lonely king on top of a mountain, clinging to your excellence with all your might even as they called you heartless and cruel.

_Just keep up, damn it_, you’d say under your breath when you were young. Weren’t you here to succeed? What was the point in producing half-baked gazes, half-hearted dancing, half-memorized choreography, what were they all really here to do? And Jinhyuk, ever the diplomat even then, would defuse the tension, tell them you were tired, you were cranky. Because he was the only one who could keep up with you halfway, the only one who could tolerate you, back then, he had earned your begrudging respect.

When the rumors blew up after you had accidentally, _accidentally_ touched the nation’s sweetheart Jeon Somi, how you had molested her, how you were no better than a rapist, a coward, a pedophile, a monster, _who did you think you were_, you’d finally been knocked from your pedestal. You had never thought it would come from the public that you so slavishly served, for whom you lived, on whose esteem you were paid a paycheck and given your life’s worth and meaning. Your agency hid you and you stopped appearing, and in the cave of your isolation, your weariness compounded.

You had wished it would end—the tiredness, or life itself. If only you could switch on life as easily as a light, as a computer, as a fan, if only your heartless beating heart were just a line of zeroes and ones, if only the lines on this screen were zeros and ones and not characters that you could read.

If only you didn’t know how to read, maybe you would be spared.

“Stop it,” Jinhyuk would say, and snatch your phone away from you. Your hands would hover in the air, limp, clutching for clouds blown away.

“Give it back.” You hated the way your voice sounded: ennervated, tinny, barely there.

“How about,” Jinhyuk mulled, “we get you some food instead?”

“So bring it to me.”

You were a miserable fool. And while the other members of your group said they felt sorry for you, tiptoed around you like you were made of eggshells, you hated them for their pity and for the way they must feel now, _so this is how King Wooseok loses his claim to the throne._

Jinhyuk had no pity in his gaze. He looked at you then with the long suffering of a fond father.

Eventually you would unstick yourself from the couch and follow him down the hall to the elevator to the corner shop where you would buy two cheap egg sandwiches and unwrap them there on the stoop. Your eyes hurt and you would rub at them. Jinhyuk noted you’d been spending too much time on your phone. He was right.

“You won’t find anything new,” he munched thoughtfully.

“I know.” All there would be were more rumors of how you accidentally, _accidentally_, _accidentally._ The anger flushes to the surface again, and your hands wrap tight around your sandwich, egg filling spilling out in false sulfuric yellow cheer.

_How dare they accuse you, how dare they, the faceless, brainless masses, ruin everything you’ve worked for—_

“Eat,” Jinhyuk would tell you, pointing to the limp mass of half sandwich in your hand.

“It’s over,” you would say.

At first, Jinhyuk would touch your arm. “Just eat,” he would say. From there, he would guide your hands to your mouth and wait for as long as you needed before you opened your mouth to take another bite.

“My life, my career, the group, everything is over,” you’d whisper.

“It’s okay,” he would say. “It’ll be okay.” He’d sit closer, run a hand down your back, stiff as a board, and wrap a hand around your shoulders.

“I ruined everything,” you’d say, and start to cry.

“You haven’t ruined anything,” he’d say, and hold you there as sobs shook your body.

Over time, you learned to put your head on his collarbones. Sitting there crying until you had no more tears, you felt like the earth itself, torrential rains followed by spells of drought, wrung dry and cracked, nothing left alive in the heat baking from the pavement, heat rising from the dust in shimmering waves. And Jinhyuk there with you, sitting with you as the sun and moon switched places, over and over again, until you finally were able to shake the prehistoric dust from your bones.

“Let’s try out,” you’d told him last year, when Up10tion had a meager, straggling hundred fans at the last fansign. “We can do better than this. Jinhyuk. We’re meant to do more. Let’s go for it.”

You knew he looked at you with wonder. He laughed to himself. “You’re back,” he said under his breath.

“You need to be there,” you said, haughty, commandeering, ignoring what he said. You didn’t want to linger on that, on _you’re back_. There was no going back to anything that you had before. There was only one way, and that was forward, out of the drought, out of the torrents of endless rain, out of the scorched and drenched earth that was your life until now. “You’re coming with me whether you like it or not.”

“Don’t worry,” he said, after he was done giggling to himself. He wiped a tear from his eye. “Of course I’m coming with you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Twitter: @_radishface


	14. gossip girls

CF shooting has gone two hours past its scheduled time, and Junho and Minhee are waiting for their final set with the photographer, who is wrapping up with Yohan and Seungwoo.

At this rate they'll never make it back in time before the showers all get taken. There's a reason that Kang Minhee didn't take showers during the concept stage challenge and that was because he couldn’t be bothered to wait for the showers to become free the later it got. He and Junho were in the latter group and were the last to get filmed, maybe for popularity reasons or maybe because they were the healthiest in the group and therefore could stay the longest, because come winter everyone was getting sick and ill and dropping left and right like flies. For some reason they were left standing, the hardiest constitutions of the group. Who woulda thunk.

“Hey,” Junho says idly. He’s been reading jokes from Twitter for the last twenty minutes, to Minhee’s casual amusement. Not all of them have been good, but delivered in Junho’s deadpan manner, they all become _somehow_ better. Something about his voice now shakes Minhee out of his daze. It’s not another Twitter joke.

“What?”

“Did you hear that Seungyoun-hyung had a threesome?”

Minhee shook his head. “I’m not surprised at our Seungyoun-hyung,” Minhee says cooly, to hide his surprise. “Of all the people in our group, I think he’d be the one to actually do something like that.”

Minhee had kissed a girl freshman year, before any of this idol business began to happen. And yet it was the furthest from arousing. All he remembers was that he was terrified. Idolatry feels safer. Up there on the stage you can be loved without the risk of actual intimacy.

“Who else?”

“Who else what?”

Junho wiggles his eyebrows up and down. Minhee huffs, glad the makeup can hide his embarrassment. He hadn’t pegged Junho for a petty gossip. But they _have_ been sitting around for the last two hours. Maybe petty gossip is overdue.

Okay. Think about it sincerely. To kiss not one, but two girls, at the same time? What courage. Minhee thinks about who else has courage _and_ coordination. “Maybe Seungwoo-hyung.”

Junho scoffs under his breath. “What, just because he’s sexy? He’s too shy.”

“Not just because of sexiness,” Minhee rolls his eyes. “You go then, Chajun-ssi.”

“Hangyul. Not now, but someday. He’s going to have more girls than he knows what to do with.”

“No, he couldn’t be bothered.”

“But he looks up to Seungyoun.” Junho shrugs. “Anything that Seungyoun does, Hangyul will eventually do.”

“I think you’re talking about Dohyon, not Hangyul.”

Junho purses his lips and leans back in his chair. “Touché. All right, this is how it goes in the group, if you ask me.””

Something about Junho’s smugness grates on Minhee’s nerves. He closes his eyes and flatlines. “Sure, I’m asking.

“Dohyon looks up to Seungyoun and no one but Seungyoun. Wooseok teases Seungyoun for it but can’t tease him too much or criticize him too much, because Seungyoun rooms with Hangyul, and they're physically close in a way that seems suspicious but no one asks because no one wants to invite scrutiny upon themselves. Hangyul, meanwhile, has discovered his new favorite hobby which is teasing Hyeongjun, who runs to Yohan who guards his innocence jealously. This rubs Eunsang the wrong way sometimes, because Eunsang doesn't quite know if he’s the cute one or the sexy one or the up-and-coming one—Eunsang doesn’t have a place yet, and sees any favoritism from Yohan as an exclusion of himself, and so it’s on Seungwoo to reassure Eunsang and pet him to sleep, which sets Dongpyo ablaze with jealousy, not that Seungwoo minds; from there, Dongpyo will run to Seungyoun to try and spark Seungwoo’s jealousy, but the two hyungs are close enough that they have a mutual understanding—Seungyoun will guide Dongpyo back to Seungwoo.

This is the fraught, precarious balance we find ourselves dependent on for our livelihoods.”

Minhee, despite himself, laughs. “They should call you gossip girl.”

“What do you think?”

“Pretty spot on,” Minhee says. “But you missed me.”

“Ready?”

“Hit me,” Minhee braces himself, flipping his chair around to cross his arms over the back.

“You’re a strange one, too. You don't quite fit, but you don’t need to. You don’t have a place within the group, and you’re not interrelated or networked in any way. You share similarities with Eunsang in that sense, but he’s more desperate than you. You’re one of the funny ones, but not in the same way that Seungyoun-hyung is. Unlike him, your winning quality is that you don’t care what others think. That simultaneously soothes you and distances you. But I think you’re all right with it.”

Minhee shakes his head in disbelief. “How in the world did I get stuck with you today?”

“My turn.”

“I don’t understand why Yohan keeps you around. But I guess every group needs its useless one.”

“Ouch,” Junho smiles, all teeth.

Eventually, Yohan and Seungwoo emerge from the set. “What were y’all talking about?” Yohan swings an arm around Junho, who grins beatifically and boops Yohan’s cheeks.

_Your friend knows too much about you for your own good_, Minhee wants to say, but keeps his mouth shuts and smiles a sage, deeply dimpled smile instead.


	15. finally selfish

  
“Seungwoo-yah,” your sister calls. You put down your pencil and close your book, listening for her next words. “Come in here.”

She’s just finished getting dressed. Another audition out north in Seoul, another bag packed for the weekend, another weekend gone without her at home. It’s two in the afternoon on a Sunday and she’s wearing a perfectly-applied, full face of makeup and her shirt is prim and pressed—_you never know, Seungwoo, who might be watching._

Her bedroom is a pale, washed out pink, paint unchanged from when she was ten and that was her favorite color and also yours because you didn’t know a world that wasn’t your sister’s world, didn’t know favorites that weren’t her favorites. On her dresser is a picture from a few years ago; your middle school graduation, your cap and gown askew and you standing straight as a rod, flanked by her and _halmeoni._ They were the only ones there from your family that day.

“I made enough _yukgaejang_ to last everyone for a few days,” she says. “Make sure to leave mom and dad out bowls after you have your dinner for when they get home. They get back so late they forget to eat.”

“I know, I know.”

“And _halmeoni_ is coming on Thursday, so you won’t starve.”

“I can cook too,” you say, but you don’t really mean it. Your sister is the best cook in the family.

“Then next time you can make the _yukgaejang_,” she says, and points with her chin to the roller suitcase by her dresser. “Help me bring this down.”

Her roller suitcase is beside her door, blazoned with stickers of places she’s never been: NEW YORK, BARCELONA, MILAN, LOS ANGELES. You haven’t seen those stickers before; you wonder where she got them. You pick it up and take it outside to the elevators; she follows behind, fastening her earrings and shrugging on her jacket, locking up behind her. In front of the apartment complex, you ask her if she wants you to go to the train station with her.

“If you want, but I’ll be fine,” she clucks, fingers flying over her phone. These days, her phone lights up, whistling at her more often than not. Things are busy, she says. Things are busy, and there are so many opportunities in Seoul, if only you keep your eyes open and you know who to ask, and once you start, you should never, ever stop asking.

“You should come along next time, Seungwoo-yah,” she says, as her rideshare pulls into the driveway. Her fingers reach out, brush your bangs out of your face. “The city is fun. _Noona_ has a lot of friends that can take you around—if you’re too embarrassed to be seen with me.” She smiles a little smile that once upon a time used to be all cheek.

“Maybe next time,” you say, and open the car door for her and tuck her suitcase into the passenger’s seat in the front of the taxi. She clambers in, suddenly ungainly, platform heels nearly tripping her over. You’ve never told her about that time you went out with your friends to _noraebang_ and they told you you should be a singer.

“Wish me luck,” she says.

You wave at her until the car turns around the bend.

#

  
You’ve been a leader for so long that you’ve nearly forgotten what selfishness feels like. But now you are here.

Where is here?

Here is here, Dongpyo’s eyes sparkling at you when you tell him you believe in him—

Here is here, Dongpyo’s hands pushing you away as you clamor in for an embrace, desperate to hold him, him knowing your desperation and pushing you away and you loving it—

Here is _here,_ Dongpyo’s whine after you as you ignore him, walk away, turn a blind eye to his wails, pretend to be the godly, selfless saint you’re rumored to be, _if only they knew._

Now you are _here_ and Dongpyo resists you and yet can’t fight you, doesn’t want to listen and yet can’t resist your wisdom, selfishness like sunshine after rain, rain after a dry spell, like watermelon in the dead of summer, a fireplace in the dead of winter. Your sudden late spring bloom of selfishness intoxicates you, every Dongpyo-related thought humming through your brain like drunken birds.

So you find him in your unfilmed moments. Your nose presses against his neck, nuzzling, your arms come around him, you lift him up, you toss him around, you can’t help yourself, you don’t want to. His smallness, his lightness, is a thrill. He hates you for it at first, of course he does, to the backdrop of laughter of others, startled and embarrassed and curious about how you dote on him, Dongpyo retaliates: you don’t take him seriously, you don’t respect him, you’re just a big bully hyung, you just want to have your way, and yes, yes, _yes, you do_.

As he finds you in the night, please hold me, please comfort me, will I be okay, will I make it, will you make it—as Dongpyo lets you in little by little, you feel your selflessness evaporating. It melts in the heat of his sun and you begin to think, _ah, wouldn’t it be wonderful, wouldn’t it be wonderful to debut together, wouldn’t it be wonderful to see what he’ll become, wouldn’t it be wonderful to be there as he grows up, wouldn’t it be wonderful if one day, Dongpyo—_

#

  
It’s almost the end of filming. You’re less than three weeks away from the finale.

And Byungchan is going to drop out.

Byungchan, you, and the CEO of Plan A sit down and talk about how it might go that One Night in July, what will happen to Victon if both of you make it, how they will be down two men for five years and how there will be nothing to come back to. The group is split on whether or not both of you should drop out. Produce X is, after all, just supposed to be a gambit for attention.

Your heart, traitor, beats steadily on, even if your stomach feels like it’s going to turn inside out: Byungchan will withdraw “for personal reasons,” “my leg is messed up anyway,” and you, Han Seungwoo, will soldier on.

Either way, you will win. You don’t make it, you come back to Victon, there’s already a comeback in the works; you make it, you debut with a group that has more funding and marketing prowess behind it than Plan A could ever afford. Your Plan B, in a sense, is much better than your Plan A, but you can’t share this pun with anybody.

Don’t feel bad, Subin tells you afterwards, tenacious, unflinching smile on his face, whatever happens, we love you and we support you, hyung. He reaches out for you, wraps his arms around you.

Your old heart breaks. From within, something not yet born begins to unfurl.

That evening after dinner in the canteen you return to your dorm and the smell of it hits you like a rock: here you are, here is all you need to be. Dongpyo is in your bed, sheets a pile around his ankles, he’s writing in his Produce journal. He sees you and his eyes, pleadingly big, meet yours, and you want to collapse. Dongpyo doesn’t know any of what’s happened to you or Byungchan or Victon or Plan A this afternoon, but he can tell something is wrong. He holds out his arms, reflexive, the way you’ve told him you want to be hugged when you hug him, the way you’ve told him you want to be received when you reach out for him, and you sink into bed, into the dark, away from the cameras, away from your career, away from Seungwoo the lead vocal rapper dancer leader and you let Dongpyo stroke your hair and cradle your head.

“Don’t worry, Seungwoo-hyung,” Dongpyo whispers into your ear, musical and apple-sweet. “Whatever it is, I’ll be here for you, okay?”

You'd cry, if only you weren’t exhausted.

Your last thought before you drift off is that you will never betray Dongpyo the way you have betrayed Victon, you will never grow so far and so fast that you’d leave him behind. So let Dongpyo run ahead of you. Let him stretch his legs, let him fly, let him soar. You will be there behind him and right by him.

For as long as he’ll let you.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To be continued in _18\. little ogre_. 
> 
> Follow @_radishface on Twitter for updates.


	16. spring/summer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Watching an old friend work magic.

Neighboring studios. It was a nice twist of fate. Since Jinhyuk’s shoot wrapped up before Wooseok’s, after he was cleaned up he headed over to the next lot to meet his friend.

Golf clubs abounded, fake grass tiles lined the floor, a makeshift hill set against a greenscreen backdrop. “Hey,” Wooseok said, like it was no big deal when Jinhyuk arrived. He was sitting down, face half made up, curlers in his hair. He looked extraordinarily well-rested for someone who had been there since four in the morning. Jinhyuk could not say the same for himself. He took a seat next to Wooseok, who looked like he’d nodded off. Jinhyuk rapped his knuckles on the back of Wooseok’s chair. Anyone there? Wooseok pinched back a smile, typical, but turned his hand around from where it had been in his lap and grasped Jinhyuk’s fingers, like a baby. They sat there in silence, Crush’s latest song playing from someone’s phone, tinny and comical, as if it were coming from the inside of a rice tin. Then the sound of blow dryers drowned everything in white until they were done. Into tartan shorts and a polo shirt went Wooseok, and Jinhyuk thought he looked ridiculous but Wooseok seemed completely at home in his beret, they loved putting him in those, didn’t they?

No-one else looks good in one but me, Wooseok demurred, no one carries their weight like I do. I saw Seungyoun in one, Jinhyuk recalled. He’s a dirty copycat, Wooseok sniffed, looking fond, and it made Jinhyuk’s heart clench a little funny. Maybe regret, maybe jealousy, maybe just a mirroring fondness back at Wooseok. He wasn’t above any of it because he knew the truth.

The truth was that they weren’t spending every waking moment together anymore. So Jinhyuk let himself marvel at the way Wooseok captured the light, the sharp angles of his jaw, the corded tension in his neck. That he was carrying a club, that he held it in all manner of ways that drew attention to his fingers: slim, elegant, fetching, grasping, that naturally attention on those fingers meant attention to his mouth, that was Wooseok. Also Wooseok: to stand in such a stiff, classical outfit with stiff, mechanical objects and make everything look as languid and as palpable, suggestive, subjective as he was—Jinhyuk felt a heaviness stir in his belly as he watched Wooseok work. Familiar desire, familiar complexity of _don’t_ with _why not_ with _it doesn’t matter anyway_. And then as soon as the CD called the shot, Wooseok had already glided off-set and the heaviness in Jinhyuk’s belly was replaced with real physical hunger for food. He’d ask Wooseok to grab lunch after this. A late lunch.

In between Wooseok’s outfit changes he snuck looks at the previews on the photographer’s monitor. Wooseok looked like he’d descended from some planet made of the wandering eyes of middle-aged men at the country club. If it had been Jinhyuk, he would have channeled something bright, innocent, cheerful, _happy to carry that for you sir_, not a thought out of place.

“These are really going to sell some golf clubs,” one editor remarked to another. Wooseok trotted back to the stage, chin tilted high, pleased with himself or maybe pleased with the day—with Wooseok, the two were usually interchangeable. With a different set of shorts and shirts he went, and this time in knee-high argyle socks. If Jinhyuk had been wearing them the effect would have been of an overgrown teenager stepping onto the virgin green—on Wooseok, steeped in a lusty haze, the effect was sensory overload.

Jinhyuk’s mind drifted to another world. “Together,” the CD would say, and they’d stand back to back out on the green, out in real space, out on the real green. Sitting, standing, at one point, calves crossed over one another as they lay down, arms over their faces as the camera snapped away in the full sun. Wooseok’s knee would lean against Jinhyuk’s thigh, idly kneading at his IT band. It’s still tight, isn’t it, he’d say. Hasn’t changed, Jinhyuk would hiss through clenched teeth. The CD would croon over them, that’s great, that’s great, keep that tension in your face, just like that. And Wooseok, buoyed on, would dig his knee even harder into Jinhyuk’s thigh until Jinhyuk cried out in pain, but even then he wouldn’t turn away. Grin and bear it until the CD called the shot. Collapsed in laughter everyone would be, the photographer, the lighting assistants, the stylists, all but painting the golf green with peals of laughter. You’re still as tight as a screw, Wooseok would say, as Jinhyuk helped him up from the grass. And you’re still a sadist, Jinhyuk would reply.

Wooseok, shrugging one slip of the shoulder, then the other, a pastiche of himself: there may have been some world where Jinhyuk would have wanted the flesh of those shoulders pressing back against his teeth—and yet, not for Wooseok’s lack of talent, that reality wasn’t this one. This Wooseok, instead, melted from lusty to playful, a parody of himself, to quietly thoughtful, and then the CD called the shot.

“You busy after this?” Wooseok asked, and Jinhyuk shook his head, still a little speechless. “Me neither,” Wooseok said, perfunctory—“Let’s get lunch.”

_That was my line,_ Jinhyuk couldn’t help but grin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Follow on Twitter for updates @_radishface


	17. pillowtalk

Hangyul supposes it’s all right if Wooseok gets the seat next to Seungyoun on the company van, since Hangyul is the one who gets to room with him.  
  
  
#  
  
  
“So when did you, you know?”

The best conversations seem to crop up after midnight. This one has traced the long lineage of parents to school to growing up to, of course, first times.

“When I was sixteen, maybe?”

Seungyoun cackles to himself. “Not too long ago.”

“Feels like years ago.”

“That’s because it is.”

“Okay, sure,” Hangyul will give him that one.

“Who was it?”

“Girl at MBK.”

“You bad boy. How old was she? Actually, never mind, I don't want to know.”

“We had chemistry.”

“You have chemistry with everybody.”

“Could say the same for you.”

“I’m choosy,” Seungyoun tosses his head.

“That’s not what I heard,” Hangyul smirks. “I heard you had a threesome.”

Seungyoun’s eyes fly wide open at that before he bursts into giggles. “Dude, that just means I’m _even more_ discerning.”

“No, it just means you can’t choose!”

A few bangs on the wall from Wooseok’s side of the room, and they put pillows over their faces to muffle their laughs.

The next morning Hyeongjun comes in to wake him up. Seungyoun is already at the gym with Wooseok, their usual morning routine. Hyeongjun raises his voice a little louder, it’s time to get up! Hangyul feigns sleep until Hyeongjun is close enough to grab, and he pulls him into bed, little spoon struggling.

Hyeongjun eventually goes limp and pliant. “You all always stay up so late,” he pouts. “It's not healthy.”

“We can't all be good boys like you,” says Hangyul, nesting his nose on the nape of Hyeongjun’s neck. Hyeongjun squirms.

“What do you even talk about, anyway?”

“Hyung stuff,” Hangyul murmurs, and squeezes Hyeongjun closer.  
  
  
#  
  
  
Filming for the Idol Room segment ends, congratulations are held, and then they’re packed into the elevators and into their ride. Seungyoun sits with his body facing the aisle in the car on the ride back home. Hm. That doesn’t usually happen. Usually, if anything, he and Wooseok are curled in conspiratorially to each other, reviewing selfie footage or fiddling with the group camera.

Back in the dorms, it’s the usual routine of tomorrow’s schedule brief, then shower, then relax. Hangyul is about to fire up his phone, he’s been making great progress on his mobile game lately, _Clash of Clans,_ when Seungyoun comes in with a dramatic sigh. He’s fresh from his shower, hair still wet, t-shirt damp. He sighs again.

“What,” Hangyul says. Seungyoun’s responding look is somewhere between guilty and confused.

Hm. Hangyul hasn’t seen this before.

It’s gone in a flash, replaced by Seungyoun’s usual wide, clowning smile, exuberant. But Hangyul knows he didn’t just see this come out of nowhere.

“You did good today, kiddo,” Seungyoun says.

“Easy peasy,” Hangyul replies.

“Well, you gave Wooseok-_ssi_ a hard time.”

“I sure did,” Hangyul chuckles. No Gucci cardigan could insulate Wooseok from the overpowering majesty that was Hangyul in his best rendition of _Magic Mike._ He remembers Wooseok’s eyes, comically wide, lips pursed in thin outrage as Hangyul approached him on his knees. How he couldn’t keep his shit together when it was his turn to sex up the studio. Hilarious. Definitely a moment to remember.

“Wooseok told me that if you harassed him again, I’d have to discipline you.”

Hangyul turns around and arches up his butt in Seungyoun’s direction, to Seungyoun’s startled shriek—and next thing he knows, Seungyoun has jumped into bed and is covering his face with a pillow. “Dude,” he keens from beneath the fluff, “don’t make it so easy.”

“Well,” Hangyul intones, standing back up, “make up your mind, good sir.”

“You really want to be spanked?” But Seungyoun sounds deflated, defeated. Hangyul isn’t sure whether to laugh it off or brush it aside, but there’s something strange about the way Seungyoun is talking now.

Whatever. They’ve all been sleep-deprived. “I was just following orders.” Hangyul says, trying to lift the mood.

“That’s true,” Seungyoun says. His voice is unexpectedly clear now, and sounds almost snide, almost menacing.

“You okay?”

“We’re just a bunch of singing, dancing monkeys. Just taking orders. Singing, dancing until we can’t. Laughing on cue. And nobody sees those hosts for what they are.”

“You don’t give us enough credit.” Hangyul says. Why does he feel like he’s in a cage with a wild hyena? “It’s just a job.”

“Just a job,” Seungyoun breathes.

“Yeah.”

“But you don’t mind it? You really don’t care? It’s been almost seven stages now and every time you get the outfit that shows everything. Don’t you want them to stop?”

_No_, Hangyul thinks. “They’re not bad stage outfits. And I can’t help it,” he taps his abdomen with both hands. “They know what the fans like to see, so who am I to complain?” He doesn’t say what’s really on his mind, which is that _it’s easy enough to just do what they tell us to do, isn’t it?_

“Can’t help it if the camera loves you.”

“Nope.”

“Just following orders.”

“Pretty much.”

“Okay,” Seungyoun says, sounding a little calmer. The tension’s at least left his voice and he’s stopped hyperventilating into the pillow. “Okay.”

It’s quiet for a little bit. Hangyul puts the sound on his phone, and the tinny music of his strategy game fills the space. He plays for a little bit before he decides to ask what Seungyoun actually seems to want to be asked.

“Hey, hyung.”

“Mm?” Seungyoun sounds like he’s half-asleep. Maybe he is. His eyes are closed.

“Never mind,” Hangyul says.

  
  
#

  
  
One week later, they’re in Japan. During their performance of U GOT IT, Seungyoun reaches out for Wooseok’s chin during the bridge in a bid for the fans.

The first time Seungyoun did it at their Debut Showcon, Wooseok, after a brief look of surprise so beautifully candid it could have been scripted, recovered his poise almost immediately. In one elegant shrug of the neck and shoulders he managed to deftly convey abandon and surrender while _also_ moving himself gamely away from Seungyoun’s lingering hand. This time, Seungyoun’s initiative is met with two withering shakes of the finger from their #2. Perhaps the other members don’t notice, but Hangyul almost bursts out laughing at Seungyoun’s wounded response—he looks like he wants to run off stage to nurse his wounds—but the _show must go on_.

And so it does.

Back in the hotel, Hangyul clowns Seungyoun for it, because somebody has to say something, and Seungyoun still looks sad, which is dumb, because what’s there to _actually_ be sad about? But Hangyul knows that if he doesn’t say something then Seungyoun’s going to play _The Weeknd_ all night and keep himself up until their flight home the next morning. Which is fine, Seungyoun is an adult and Hangyul’s _hyung_ and should be fine at taking care of himself but Hangyul also wants to sleep, okay?

“Wooseok-hyung told me,” he starts, and Seungyoun raises his hands in defense, _no, please don’t say it—_

“Wooseok-hyung told me,” Hangyul says, raising his voice, removing the pillows from where Seungyoun is valiantly trying to squeeze them over his ears, “that if you harassed him again, to discipline you.”

“No,” Seungyoun says, hands instinctively going to cover his ass, but Hangyul, one might have forgotten, used to practice martial arts, and is trained in the art of spotting the vulnerable.

“_Noooo,_” Seungyoun wheezes, hands coming up too late to protect his armpits.

There was a reason they nicknamed him _Tiger_ back in his taekwondo days—Hangyul tickles Seungyoun without mercy until Seungyoun’s squeals dissolve into asthmatic wheezes, until they’re both exhausted, sweat cooling under the full blast of the hotel A/C unit, sheets tangled in a heap around their legs.

  
#

  
Something about being in Seoul feeds Seungyoun like home games feed a baseball team. Maybe he’s like an ogre whose power source is the Han River, something like that. Hangyul, usually an early sleeper, finds that he doesn’t mind becoming a night owl at all.

“I love this artist,” Seungyoun pulls up a song that opens with the glissando of a harp before heavy bass hits Hangyul in the bass of his spine. The room reverberates as a woman’s voice comes on: _Can you focus on me_. “The way her voice is—pretty special, don’t you think?”

“Not bad,” Hangyul says, rubbing at the goosebumps on his arm.

“But it’s more than that. I think what makes this song so special is the way they’ve mastered it. You don’t usually hear a voice done in an acoustic style like this against such a deep R&B drop. Here.” Seungyoun scrubs back to the beginning, right before the singer begins, and her stuttering intake of breath fills the room. Hangyul’s spine shivers when Seungyoun starts to sing along.

“Can you do the whole thing?” Sure, Hangyul has roomed with the guy for a month now, but Seungyoun is still full of surprises.

“Only parts,” Seungyoun demurs. “But English isn’t too hard if you just make the sounds. Think of all our international fans who have to sing along in Korean.” His phone buzzes on the desk. Seungyoun grins at the caller ID before he picks it up.

“Wooseok-ssi,” he laughs. Hangyul suppresses a smirk. “Okay, okay, we’ll turn down the volume.”

The night that they host the inaugural episode of _X1 Midnight Voice_, Wooseok comes in and steals the last five minutes of the show. Even then, Hangyul is happy if only because Seungyoun is happy, happy that Wooseok has crept in in his big white t-shirt with the stretched out neck to say _good night_ in that coquettish low tone of his, as if he were saying it to just Seungyoun and no one else. At one in the morning, performance is reality and reality is performance, which is to say, there’s nothing different about the two.

To see Seungyoun’s face peel itself apart in his trademark wide smile in the wake of Wooseok’s admission as the light of the full moon shines in through their window, Hangyul knows he can sleep easy tonight.

“That was nice,” Seungyoun says softly, just as Hangyul is about to drift off.

“Yep.”

“It was my first time doing something like that in a while,” Seungyoun continues. “I used to share music like that on my Instagram—but this time, with VLive, it was really great to hear from the fans—and remember that one girl who said she was scared walking home alone but heard our voices—right? We’re actually helping, it’s not just about performing, it’s about giving people something more to help them with their daily lives...”

“Sure,” Hangyul mumbles, drifting in and out of Seungyoun’s waxing philosophical.

“And I didn’t know Wooseok was going to come in at the end.”

_I did,_ Hangyul almost says, but is too tired to think of what he might say after that, and so drifts off instead.

  
  
#

  
  
The Jimin incident comes up not a day after their radio show.

Hangyul knows a few things: that Park Jimin is a friend of Seungyoun's, a close one at that; they’d made music together; they’d been part of a spin-off collective called _MOLA_, they’d been there for each other when the going was tough and the tough was going. Her offhand, literal gag about Seungyoun’s inclusion in X1—and her confession that she didn’t know if she should feel happy when Seungyoun placed fifth—had just gone viral. Their Twitter feed was filled with vitriol against Seungyoun’s supposed “hater”.

Hangyul is in bed on his phone and Seungyoun is crunched over his laptop, probably on social media, from the looks of it.

“You okay?” Hangyul is just checking.

“I’ll be fine,” says Seungyoun, emphasis on the first word. “It’s nothing she hasn’t said to my face before.”

“You talk to any of them lately?”

“Maybe,” Seungyoun hedges.

“You should call her,” Hangyul says. _It’s like calling your mom. If you don’t call her enough, she’ll get worried about you, and start making up stories in her own head about what’s going on with you._

Five minutes to one in the morning, and there’s a knock on their door. “Come in,” says Hangyul. Wooseok emerges, dressed in the same white t-shirt and gym shorts as yesterday. His hair is damp, his face squeaky clean, and he crosses the room with a few strides.

“Stop it,” Wooseok says, and closes the top of Seungyoun’s laptop.

“But—”

“You won’t find anything new there. Come on,” he says, and takes Seungyoun’s hands, which are grasping fitfully at his laptop in half mirth, half real desperation. Wooseok spins Seungyoun around in his chair and pulls with more force, “To bed,” he commands, and like a light switch flipped, Seungyoun lets himself be pulled along.

“Don’t you know by now,” Wooseok says, sitting on the edge, “what to pay attention to, and what to ignore?”

“I guess not,” Seungyoun mumbles.

“Well, you’d better learn it soon.”

Some moments pass, and then Seungyoun sniffs, “do you think she hates me?”

“It’s not like that.”

“What’s it like, then?”

“I think she’s sad you can’t be as close as you were before, and she doesn’t understand your new world now. Maybe you haven’t spoken in a while?”

“Maybe,” Seungyoun whispers.

“You’re such a big star these days, aren’t you? Such a big star, in such big, high budget MVs with such expensive choreography, surrounded by the country’s most handsome fiends. No time for your old friends anymore.”

“I’m not like that,” Seungyoun whines.

“Then call her.” Wooseok’s voice is gentle.

“Now?”

“Tomorrow, after the gym. Okay?”

“Mmkay.”

Hangyul plugs away at his game, pretending not to notice the way Wooseok’s fingers are threaded through Seungyoun’s hair, the way Seungyoun’s eyes are half-lidded and heavy, already asleep.  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continued in _19\. roppongi, someday_.
> 
> Twitter: @_radishface


	18. little ogre

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Does the ill-behaved, spoiled brat get what he wants?

What is this—a submarine?

Deep in the basement recesses of the Studio you step into the interview room and its powder, lights, camera, action. Walls soundproof, voices hushed, PDs and cameramen all dressed in black as unobtrusive as wave currents in the deep ocean. You’ve been here before and you’ll be here again, but you know what the questions are today and somehow that makes the room stuffier, heavier, more dangerous.

The prime lens bickers with the wide angle for your attention, black pearls like whale eyes, and some PD-nim’s iPhone camera is minnowing away. How do they expect you to give any honest answers under the glare of blinding lights and the stare of not one, not two, but three cameras on your face? Don’t you dare put my tears on Instagram, please put my tears on Instagram, hide me, make me famous, because I know what the next question is, and I think I’m supposed to cry.

_What is Han Seungwoo to Son Dongpyo?_

#

  
  
“My little cutie pie,” mother sighs.

“_Eomma_,” you say in that little whine that means _Don’t call me that_, that means _I miss you,_ but is also too shy to say, _I miss you_. How's life in quiet Yeongdeok, where the creambellied crabs scuttle unmolested down the shore?

“We had the whole beach to ourselves, just like last summer. But," mother shakes her head, "we didn't catch many last weekend, Dongpyo-yah. And the house is so quiet without you.”

You tell her to turn on the television. You say you’ll send her a compilation video, one of those that your fans have put together.

“But those are on the computer,” she says.

“That's why you have an iPad, _eomma_, so it'll be easier for you to watch my videos.”

“You know I don’t know how to use those things.”

“It’s literally—_eomma_, you just have to push a button, and then you’ll get it.”

“You know your _eomma_ is helpless when it comes to these things. I don’t know how to unlock it.”

“These days it uses your face to do that. You literally don’t even have to do anything!”

“Well, maybe I didn’t set it up properly. My cutie pie will have to help me when he’s back.”

“Yes, sure, of course, and for free, for no extra charge, right?” You roll your eyes, she coos at you, you stick out your tongue, she coos at you, and finally you grin and she grins and you burst out laughing, because she has big eyes that squint just like yours, make others laugh just like yours. Relatives have always told you how much like your mom you look like, how you were lucky to get her genes, how lucky you were to inherit your mother’s charming, charismatic, flirtatious disposition, so unlike your father.

So unlike your father.

Hesitantly—“Do you want to say hello to your dad?”

You look at the clock. Your fifteen minutes in the call room is almost up. “Actually, I have to go, _eomma_.”

“Okay,” she says softly. “Next time, then.”

“Next time,” you say.

#

  
  
You hear that in Japan, girls must give up their phones and social media when they become a geisha-in-training. They will, instead of scrolling through pictures of friends and wishing they were elsewhere, spend all their energy on learning the proper robes for the proper seasons, learning how to smile and when to do so, sleeping in their massive wigs on wooden pillows and learning how to strum their fingers so gently on the _shamisen_ that it looks like they are dancing more than plucking.

They will go for years without contact with the outside world and then one day—

One day, well. Who knows? You put on a different set of clothes, maybe fancier, more laden with meaning and symbolism and the changing of the seasons, and then you’re a different person.

But are you?

You know you are changing. The cells in your body are turning over at a frenetic pace. But unlike the assembly line in a factory or in a fast food restaurant or highways at rush hour, you can understand no particular order to the madness unfolding within you; all you know is that you are terrible to Seungwoo and he still has the gall to dote on you.

“You only love me because I’m young,” you throat at him tauntingly. “You only love me because I don’t know any better.”

“Dongpyo,” he implores you, mostly with big eyes and outstretched arms, wounded in his sex, unprotesting, complicit.

Isn’t that an idea? _Wounded in his sex._ It means everything and nothing, and somehow you have power over it. You are tiny and your hands are pale, delicate, weak by all means, you can barely grasp the lat pull down bar when you all go to the apartment gym, but when it comes to your _appa_’s heart they are knuckled and gnarled, an ogre’s hands, hunting for rabbits, crushing their life from their tiny beating skulls, dumb without mercy.

Seungwoo grimaces and smiles and hugs himself and releases himself to you in one go. He knows the barb is a halfway house apology, and as his arms come up around you you realize you are terrified of the day that you will grow so far and change so much that he will no longer recognize you or be able to read your simpleton mind.

Terror, absolute—who will you be then, if not free?

#

  
  
When did it start?

_Eat a little more, why won’t you?_  
_You’re a growing boy, aren’t you?_  
_Open wide, Dongpyo-yah._

You could have read more into his desire to feed you, to see your cheeks stuffed, the grand relish gnashing its way through your teeth as you gritted out your pained oversatisfaction, to see the haze of satiation descend over you after every mealtime. There was a porous distinction between innocence and perversity, and every action you let slide was another termite at the woodwork.

“The cafeteria food is gross,” you wrinkled your nose. _Take me somewhere_, you said with the aftertaste of your disdain.

“You still have to eat.”

“Who says?”

“If you don’t,” Seungwoo has turned reasonable now, and you hate it, _you hate it_, “you won’t have any energy left for tomorrow’s practice.”

You haven’t been on the same stage as him since _Boss_, merely a month ago but also an eternity, you’ve watched him flourish up and up in the rankings as your own star has dimmed, you sometimes wake up hating him for being in a different room than you and sometimes hate yourself for being so miserable about something as contrite and unprecocious as a thirty second walk down the hallway. So tonight you stumbled into the hyungs' dorm and plastered yourself over Yohan who was more than willing to cuddle, cheerfully and obliviously so, the perfect pawn in your schemes, while you mouthed indignant nothings at Seungwoo.

“Dongpyo is picky,” someone laughs, it’s Seungyoun, and you’ll kick him for that later, but for now, you shrink deeper into Yohan’s embrace.

“Kid, I can literally _feel_ your stomach vibrating,” Yohan laughs, and you kick his shins.

“It is _not_.”

“Take him out for food or else he’ll never stop whining,” Wooseok says. The way Wooseok says anything, it sounds like he knows everything about you. Your ears bleed red, and you let out a keen, _don’t wanna_.

It’s too cold, it’s too hot, it’s too humid, it’s too dry, it’s too far, it’s not far enough, they’ll see us, we’ll see them, isn’t it past curfew, isn’t it past time, isn’t it too late?

Yohan pushes you out of bed and you slug your way to the exit, your heart soaring as Seungwoo gets pushed out summarily after you, both of you in shorts, t-shirts, loose sleeves, billowing hems, and after a fifteen minute walk down the road you’re at the fried chicken joint—and right before you enter through the rickety glass doors the smell hits the base of your stomach and you’ve wanted _nothing_ so bad.

By way of apology, you curl your hand around Seungwoo’s bicep and lean in, letting your nose settle into the dip of his tricep. He flexes, maybe considered, maybe not, you’ve never been so happy for his arm to lift up and come around you.

“I knew you were hungry.” he says.

“Please, let’s just go in,” you sigh.

But now. Ladies and gentlemen, the Christ-like figure you see on stage is an illusion. Han Seungwoo is as petty and short-tempered and foul and hateful as anyone you’ve met.

“You sure know how to make us feel special.”

Seungwoo smiles and leans a little closer across the counter, drumming his fingers against the cloth-worn surface. He peers into the box of freshly-fried chicken thighs and wings before sweeping his eyelashes up and beaming at the girl behind the counter. He has been here not once, not twice. From the way he and the shopgirl look at each other, from the easy exchange they have, it’s obvious this isn’t his first time coming to this chicken joint.

“It's nothing, _oppa_.” She blushes and twirls a strand of hair around her finger, a little bit of tooth flashing as she bites her bottom lip. Kang Mirae of Kang’s Family Fried Chicken looks around, presumably trying to avoid her father’s gaze, as she passes Seungwoo a bag practically bursting. “I packed some up for you to take back to the dorms, too.” She ties a pert knot in the takeaway bag and pats it—“an extra helping of pickles on the house, okay?” After he stashes it by his feet and makes sure to let his fingers drag just so across his chin, she turns back to the small prep area and grabs a frosty shaker from the milkshake machine.

“And this is for you, Dongpyo.” She smiles and slides a tall fountain glass down to you, condensation beading up on the sides. “Extra-thick, because you’re a growing boy.” She sinks a straw into it and wipes her hands down on her apron, the fabric of her cornflower blue uniform pulling tight across her trim waist and full, perky breasts.

You hate her with the burning passion of a thousand suns.

“Mirae,” Seungwoo says, slow and a little thick, like it feels good in his mouth. “You shouldn't have.” He takes out a small bite of chicken and sighs with happiness, rolling his eyes back into his head as Mirae titters back at him, his overblown, stupid theatrics. At least you can blame the extra-thick shake for the pinched look on your face. In your seventeen-year tenure on earth, you are something of an expert in desserts, and this Kang Mirae has got her milk to ice cream to cookie ratio down pat.

You hate her anyway.

You hate her because you are hungry and there is nothing that could sate you and yet you know this very thing is sating you right now. With every angry suck you are filling your belly with temporary, makeshift complacency, when the thing you really want is for her face to singe off.

“So cute,” she says, cooing at you. “You were really hungry, weren’t you? Was practice hard today?” Seungwoo turns on his elbow and smiles at you, _knowingly_, were you? Was it? A hint of teeth. _Take that_. They feel like _noona_ and _hyung_, mom and dad.

Fuck her. Fuck him. You show her a milky smile full of ice cream and ignore Seungwoo. They start talking about the show. She doesn’t follow Victon, doesn’t even watch television, is the only person in the entire country who doesn't know what Produce is when history is being made literally just down the block, she’s a good-for-nothing bum hick out in middle-of-nowhere Paju of no erudition and no learning, only an empty vessel of a body that could be an idol’s body if only she didn’t have an ugly, flat nose, no uglier and no flatter than your nose but uglier for your hate and anger and _appa look at me._

Seungwoo is busy. Busy talking about practice, like he’s normal. Like this life of his, of yours, is just another day in the life of some people, somewhere.

“That sounds amazing!” Mirae claps, eyes wide, when Seungwoo finishes telling her about practice. “Your stage will be amazing, I'm sure. You seem like,” she says shyly, “you’re very good at what you do.”

“Me?” Seungwoo shakes his head, flashes her an embarrassed, heavy gaze. Who is this? “I’m just some guy.”

_You are not_, you want to explode, Kang Mirae’s milkshake coating the walls and ceilings like blood after a castle massacre. _You are not just some guy who can fade away into the ether of anonymity, you are not just some guy who rot away into the ground, you are not just some guy who can claim blandness when you don’t want to stand out, when you don’t want to acknowledge who you really are. You are not “just some guy,” how dare you, how dare you not take responsibility for who you really are? _

_To me?_

You choke on your milkshake, glob caught in your lungs inciting nasty, brutish coughs.

“Dongpyo—” Seungwoo says, alarmed.

You run out of the shop.

  
  
#

  
  
_What is Han Seungwoo to Son Dongpyo?_

The question, innocuous enough, opens worlds. Your bottom lip trembles, and you think, maybe, this isn’t a considered quiver at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So you decide — does he deserve what he wants, if he behaves like this? :-) 
> 
> To be continued in _21\. a little useless_. Follow @_radishface on Twitter for updates and sneak peeks.


	19. roppongi, someday

Your dream hit you like a ton of bricks. Honestly, you should have seen it coming.

Maybe you had.

“Hyung?” Hangyul calls to you. He’s already been up for a while, maybe. The room is suddenly flooded with the smell of lemon scented body wash and the scented deodorant that Hangyul likes to pepper liberally under his armpits and his nether regions. He’s probably just got out of the shower.

“You finally up?”

You throw your arm over your face. “Yeah,” you say. The tears get sucked back into your eyes, slowly but surely. “Yeah, I just woke up.”

  
  
.•°

  
  
Outside our Roppongi apartment, the rain hits the windows like paint on a Pollack canvas. It’s supposed to be nice tomorrow, but maybe the rain will let up?

Hopefully. I put in my other earring.

“And how is Kim Wooseok?” my wife asks in the fond, cautious, unassuming way I’ve learned means—I trust you, and I know you’ll behave (so behave, please).

“I don’t know the specifics,” I say. “You’re more than welcome to join, you know.”

But she opts to stay home—a gift, I know, a gift to me, trust and freedom held together by the goodness of a heart bigger than mine could ever be. There’s a reason I married her: it was to learn just that. And me being me, I’ll be a student forever.

“Have fun,” she says, and doesn’t give me a curfew. And to you I go, my heart in my throat.

The Grand Hyatt hasn’t changed much in the last decade. That’s part of its appeal, being frozen in time. Sure, there are modern touches all around, some good, some bad (like the summer they tried e-ink menus), but overall it carries a distinct flavor of the immediate moment where the past meets the present to dream about the future. Who knew that the zeitgeist of the 1960s could be so compellingly preserved?

I’d planned to arrive early. Ten years had passed but I was still as vain, as considered as ever, perhaps even more theatrical than I used to be. It would take at least fifteen minutes of properly arranging myself on a bar stool and one glass of Sauvignon bland before the folds of my Issey sweater could settle elegantly, languorously, just so.

But you were already there at the bar. Without your glasses. Disappointing. 

Though as soon as you saw me, you snapped them on. Like the lens of reality suddenly switched, in an optometrist’s office, I came into full view.

Time, and marriage, had mellowed you, as it had mellowed me. There we were no different. Your agency was running smoothly in the back-end, your writing was going well, and you were coming out with a book next month. On my end, you were pleased to hear that my exhibition was well-received.

You were never one for remembering how things were, or when they had started, but I felt seen, which meant at least some of yourself was there in the past, remembering the me who had started lessons of all kinds. And you told me it was me who had compelled you to do more, to follow the thread of your own life, to see where it would lead. It led you pretty well, I said, noting the Hermès pocket square, the expensive cut of your jacket, the iridescent navy shimmer that suggested some bespoke mill in Biela. It filled me with glee to think of the image that both of us struck, me in my Issey, effortless and whimsical, and you in your bespoke attire with the hint of a crumpled collar, your New York tortoiseshell glasses, how far we had both come! Dinner tasted extraordinary.

And then it was eleven and any later I’d be telling myself to behave, and I didn’t want to be a nag. We split the bill and descended the elevator in silence as companionable as the silence when we used to enjoy reading on the van, on planes, hunks of metal speeding through time and space from point A to B. The Grand Hyatt Roppongi’s elevator, though, infinitely preferable.

The rain had let up, so we walked back. You were staying in Shinjuku, nowhere the conference was, but claimed you wanted to stretch your legs. I ignored the pain in my feet, still glad I had chosen these shoes, leather sharp and new, so we walked. Reminiscent again, of another time we had walked, from one end of the Seoul Forest out to the Han and all the way around the bend and up the city into Itaewon, where we had hid our faces behind masks and looked at the boys, back then they were all boys, boys who could kiss each other, lean into each other, put their arms around each other and no-one would care or be the wiser. Our leather shoes clicked neatly on the pavement here, and we walked slowly, neither of us keen to rush for when would there ever be a “next time” like this?

We were old friends catching up. But how much would we, could we, catch up on?

Back then, I wanted to tell you, I would have dropped everything for you if only you asked. But you never asked, and I’m grateful to you for that. I’m happier than I could have ever been than if I were with you. And you, here now, are happier than you could ever have been with me.

I know, you’d say. You’re welcome. But none of that was said.

At the entrance to my hotel, you stood on your toes to hug me and I reached down to hug you and we embraced just like that, just a little too long. It was the only way I could love you and the only way you could love me, so we took our time and enjoyed it. You put your hands where my shoulder blades began to curve upward, tucked your head into my chest and pressed lightly. My hands, on your waist, drifted down to settle over your hips.

Above us, it began to drizzle: a fine mist, as cool as any spring breeze, and with it, the smell of trees and flowers and clouds that stretched on as far as the eye could see.

“You’re still so small,” I laughed, and broke away at last.

“I know,” you murmured, standing a little straighter, shoving your hands into your pockets.

I wanted to kiss you then, as I’d always wanted to when you looked like that. Some things would never change. The mist made your hair shine, your cheeks glow, brought your face into soft focus, dimmed the sharp brilliance and cutting wit and leaving only the possibility of romance, of what you could be like as a lover.

_Oyasuminasai,_ I said softly.

_Oyasuminasai,_ you replied.

.•°

Wooseok is sitting on the benches when you finally make it downstairs to the gym. He gives you a little reproachful look—one wouldn’t notice unless one were looking—a pout of the lips, a narrowing of the eyes, so slight you wouldn’t notice unless you were looking for it.

“Sorry,” you said, “I overslept.”

“You stay up too late.”

“I only need a few hours a night.”

“That’s what they all say,” Wooseok slings his towel over his shoulder, heading to the door, “until they break out into hives.”

_Stay,_ you almost say. How to buy time?

“Tell me what you did today.”

“Usual cardio, then some weights,” he says. “Chest presses, some. The new choreo with those damn pushups, I need to work on my upper body strength.”

“Two reps?”

“Three,” Wooseok proclaims proudly.

“That’s a good boy,” you say, and he beams before covering his mouth with his water bottle. He’s adorable, a real treat, when he wants to appear shy, when he doesn’t want you to see that you make him smile.

You make him smile. That’s its own blinding truth.

How to follow it up with something else? The conversation is over. The treadmill you’re on on beeps to life. Your damn fingers, on autopilot, have pressed _go_.

“I’ll see you upstairs,” he says, as you break into a reluctant canter. “And don’t forget your call!”

Your feet plod on, sneakers smacking against the rubber belt. How you wished you could tell him your dream! But how would you do it? How _could_ you?

Maybe you’d start, _Wooseok, I had a dream last night, it had you in it._

_Oh?_

_We were in Japan._

_I’m not surprised. You’re obsessed with Japan._

_Fine, then I won’t tell you._

_Don’t be like that. What happened?_

_It was,_ you’d say, because it was all you could say. _It was fun. We went out for dinner._

_Just me and you? Where’d we go?_

_It was some place in Roppongi. And,_ you’d catch your breath here, because you wanted something _real_, none of this small talk crap, but what could you say that wouldn’t give you away completely? _I cried when we had to say goodbye._

_Silly,_ Wooseok would roll his eyes, and it’d be the most reassuring thing you’d hear all day.

After gym, you call Jimin. She invites you out for dinner with the old gang. This weekend? Yes, this weekend works for you. No travels to far-off exotic lands? No, no travels. No CFs to shoot, no MVs to make, no songs to sing? No, no, and no. You ask if you can bring one of your members along.

“You should meet other people in X1,” you explain, “to develop your empathy. So you won’t say silly things and get yourself flamed.”

“Flamed is right,” she mutters under her breath. You can hear the brittle vestiges of last week’s Twitter drama in the trail of her sentence. She takes a deep breath. “So you’re bringing Hangyul?”

No, it wasn’t Hangyul you were thinking of bringing. But this is new news. “Why—he your bias?”

“Obviously. And we need more hunks at dinner.” She goes onto explain how she’s followed him since The Unit, and she’s obviously lying, she’s obviously only started following him since he was in X1 and became your roommate, but you let it slide. “But seriously, feel free to bring anyone else you want. Including you and me, it’s just a bunch of big losers right now.”

“Real big losers,” you repeat, feeling warm. You both giggle. You can see her face even though it’s just an audio call: phone held low, camera turned up from below her chin, her nostrils flared wide, toothy bunny smile stretched into her cheeks. You do the same.

“I’m glad you called,” she says, strangely gentle. “See you Saturday, loser.”

“Me too,” you say. “Later, loser.”

She snorts, and hangs up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To be continued in _22\. liar liar blood on fire_. 
> 
> Follow on Twitter for sneak previews and character dissection: @_radishface


	20. papa

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life’s never easy, never smooth. Even for the father of Korea’s golden boy.

It’s before Chuseok, and Yohan is coming home for a few days. His younger sisters will be happy to see him. We’ll eat well tonight. And I'll even have had a hand in it. Yohan’s mom always makes me useful before I can waste time pacing around. 

“I’m taking him to the bank tomorrow,” my wife says. “Now that he’s a man, he should have his own bank account.”

“I’ll do it,” I say, which means, _let me do it, please?_ My wife smiles to herself. “It’s not easy to manage money,” I volunteer, as a salve. “But he’s got to start somewhere.” 

“Then help me with these carrots.” 

Tonight, I’m making gimbap. And chopping carrots is calming in that way. It reminds me of another time I made gimbap. When Yohan was still small, some eighteen years ago, we had moved from Gangwon to Seoul. The family dojo wasn’t doing well, and I had to leave. _We_ had to leave. 

The dojo sign hung above our heads. _Lion’s Roar_, it said in Chinese script, thrifted from an old Zen temple in the neighborhood that had sold off its relics to fundraise. It swung on rusty hinges as I said goodbye to my father. Somehow he knew it would be the last time, final some way. 

When a son leaves the house, it’s supposed to be a proud moment. But all I felt was numbness.

That’s how I drove down, in our little Hyundai, for the next ten hours. It didn’t hit me how real our decision was until we peeled around the highway and the Han River unfurled around Yongsan-gu Bridge in all its early morning glitter. Only then did I feel some amount of pride. All of this, this great river, this great city, all of this would be ours someday. 

Then we were stuttering through the suburbs, getting lost. I had overshot our destination, the map was had been upside down all along, and when we finally arrived at my sister-in-law’s apartment, we were hungry and cranky. 

After bringing the bags in, I started to pace. My wife told me to come chop vegetables if I was going to be useless. Yohan was crying in the next room as his aunt rocked him. _Ddok-ddok-ddok_, my hand steely on the knife, cutting through carrots as though I were punching through boards. Just like it was now. 

We had stayed with her sister-in-law for a week and during that time, found an apartment to call our own. The day we moved in we set up the crib first for Yohan and that afternoon I went to the property where the Seoul branch of the dojo would be. My wife had wanted to come along,_it’s my cousin who is leasing this to us,_ but seeing as she had barely slept the night before, kept up by Yohan’s colic, I didn’t want her to come. 

It hurt my pride to see her like this. Shouldn’t I incur some of the stress? I, after all, slept like a log. “I’ll do it,” I said, and near bolted from the empty apartment with the crying baby. Looking back, it was out of responsibility and also out of fear, because the apartment was so small, so empty, so full of hard edges and cheap tiles, nothing at all like my father’s home in Gangwon, with its interior courtyard and plum trees around the property. How could I have been so dense, so ungrateful, so bullheaded, to think I could strike it out here in the big city on my own? I was a fool.

I ended up being almost half an hour late, having lost myself in the bus system and overshot my destination by three stops due to second-guessing myself. The address of the lot was written on the back of a receipt, sweaty, crammed in my pocket as my legs pumped hard, me running block past block and overshooting my destination by another two. I felt like a point-pong ball, flimsy and hollow and humiliated by this match: Seoul 1, Papa Kim 0.

My wife’s cousin was a tan, almost jaundiced-looking man with a smirk that sat almost entirely on the side of his face, chin obscured by the flip of an oversized, neon-green collar. I wondered if this was what gangsters looked like. _Kim-sshi_, he said, extending his hand for a handshake like an American. _I was getting worried. Thought about going to the pay phone to see if you had left, but figured you might have gotten lost. Anyway, you’re my only client today, so if you don’t mind, let’s show you the place and then go out for dinner, shall we?_

The place was an unused space at the back of a gym, padded with a few mats. It smelled like sweat and rubber and my wife’s cousin looked jaundiced in the fluorescent lighting. A far cry from the wooden floors and soft light coming through paper screens of the Gangwon dojo. 

_Now I know it’s not a full space, like your wife might have told you. That got leased out a week ago. But this isn’t bad, and this gym is close to a good residential area,_ the cousin explained.. _Lots of new families. Average two kids, most of them in elementary school. There’s another taekwondo school down the street but they’re agency-run, not homegrown. And you know locals don’t want their chains when it comes to something like this. They’d rather trust a family man, you know what I mean? _

I remembered Yohan wailing back in the tiny, empty apartment, and couldn’t say that I felt worthy of the title. But I nodded anyway.

_With your budget, and since you’re just starting out, this is what I’d recommend. If you book this, I won’t even charge you. Just come to me next time when you’re looking for an upgrade._

What’s the fee structure, I asked. 

_Fifty fifty with the landlord,_ he said. _He’ll take fifty percent of the student tuition, and you’ll take the other fifty percent. _

A far cry from the Gangwon dojo. I felt deflated, abused, suspicious. At the other end of the gym, someone grunted loudly and dropped a barbell. 

_It’s a well-to-do neighborhood too. Most of the men here work in corporations and get paid white-collar salaries. Their housewives go shopping for groceries twice a week at that grocery store—_ the cousin pointed to a LotteMart down the street. _All of them care about their kids’ prospects. If you get a few local champs, it’s going to be pretty easy business for you. Got any champs?_

No champs, I shook my head. Wrong answer, apparently, my wife growled at me when I got back home. 

She set down her chopsticks and steeled herself with a breath. “You’re a champion, and so am I.” 

My mouth was full of rice and so my words were mumbled: “Gangwon-do’s local sporting competitions don’t mean anything out here.” 

“It’s all Korea, isn’t it?” my wife shot back. “And your father’s dojo has seen at _least_ six different winners.” 

“Junior leagues,” I say, and my wife points a finger in my face and with her other hand, pans out to the empty apartment. 

“Junior, Gangwon-do, whatever it is, it is what it is. You’d be stupid not to use it to your advantage when we’ve got _nothing else_ to use.” 

“We’ll make our own champions,” I stood up.

“Don’t be a fool,” my wife hissed, trying to keep her voice low so as not to wake Yohan. “My cousin is already renting this place and our apartment to us for cheap and you want to start from scratch?” 

“I don’t want that place,” I raised my voice. “We didn’t come all this way just to tag onto some ghetto gym that your gangster cousin found.” 

The air went still around us, and she took a few deep breaths. So did I. “You’ve had a long day, and so have I.” 

“Yes,” I said, grateful for the out.

“Let’s sleep on it, and think more about it tomorrow.” 

I reached across the table to squeeze her hand. She pulled it away.

We got up to wash the dishes, some time passed, and life went on. 

Yohan nearly tripped over his cast as he entered the house. “Careful,” his mother said, to which he replied,_ will I ever be._

He shoveled food into his mouth like he was starving, and maybe he was. I knew their training regimes were strict, the contracts obscure, the hours long and tiring, but I couldn’t hold back my pride, anyway. My boy.

”Yohan,” his mother called to him. “Those other boys sign the contract yet?”

”Soon,” Yohan said, bringing the dishes in, dragging his foot behind him. “Really soon, mom.”

Tomorrow, I thought, after visiting the bank, I’ll take him for as much fried chicken as he wants. 


	21. a little useless

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There isn’t a world where you wouldn’t be able to catch up. And yet...
> 
> Continued from _18\. little ogre_.

You run after him. Dongpyo, you call out. But he's already sprinted ahead. 

You watch his form bob away from you and slow. There isn't a world where you wouldn't be able to catch up. No, with your height and the length of your legs, it'd be easy. Fifteen seconds at full sprint. You'd catch him, envelop him in your arms, spin him around, pick him up, what, what, my little star, are you angry with me? What in the world could you possibly be angry about? 

And then what? 

He'd cry, maybe. Finally. He'd collapse in your arms. Maybe he'd finally tell you. _Appa,_ I love you, so why do you do this to me? 

Why do I do what. 

Why do you, hiccuped, an accusing finger pointed back at the chicken shop, Kang Mirae, milkshake sticky on his chin, tears rolling down his cheeks. Beat at you, play his usual cards. Something flares up on you, a blue flame of cool dispassion you have suspended until now, how dare he not understand? 

Plausible deniability, you'd say, if Dongpyo were older. Maybe if you were older and knew a damn thing about the world, maybe if you weren't always so insistent on your own damn way, you'd get it. 

_Oh, I get it_, Dongpyo would say, if he were older. _I get it more than you give me credit for. And you know what? If I were older_, older-Dongpyo would hiss, _you and I wouldn't be here right now. And if I weren't here, you wouldn't have known hope or second chances or seen a brighter future for yourself, so you'd better, better appreciate where I'm coming from and who I am, because you'll never get a chance like this again._

Perhaps DSP would have sent Son Dongpyo into a later edition of Produce. Two years from now, perhaps Victon would have disbanded and you would have moved back to Busan. There is a soccer pitch with your name on it. No wait, you'd be starting your service. Two years from now, Son Dongpyo would have been older, even less trusting, further removed from loveliness, jaded, even. Industry elders, he'd have thought loudly, flicking a middle finger to whomever would listen. Industry elders, they're all disgusting. Monsters who prey on our youth, vampires that suck us dry, ghouls that assume our forms through scripts and behavior and choreography. He'd fling a look your way. And who are you, washed up nobody? You want this, what you can't have? He'd have laughed in your face, sent you shirking, packing, vanished. 

No, you two would have never met. 

The cicadas scream in the summer swelter. Why not. You sink down into a crouch on the pavement and pull your mask up over your nose, shaking your bangs into your eyes. Tired.

Dongpyo disappears from your view, zipping around the corner. Your heart clenches and there is a part of you, slowly crushed under the weight of your own unlived future, at how you might say sorry to him somewhere, someday.

  
#

  
Dongpyo doesn’t see me. He’s too deep in the middle of talking to his companion. He laughs at something his companion says, ducking his mouth behind his sleeve. He collects himself quickly, coyness gone in an instant. Were he younger, the sleeve, the smile, the upcast look through batted lashes would have endured. 

My heart swells with old fondness. Same old Son Dongpyo, right? I hide behind my cup and wonder if I should talk to him. He waits for his coffee. I know if I did approach him, it might shake him up. And who knows who is companion is? Some billionaire big shot? Well, Dongpyo looks confident enough these days. In charge.

I’ve still been looking for him all these years, haven’t I? He begged me. Courageous. I had to make the kid speeches. I had to save myself. In that moment then he walked away and didn’t look back. Ah! I sat there on the bench and wept. He probably wept too, as he walked away. We were released free, right? But real freedom might never come. Real freedom, openly grasped in the spaces in between memories. So talking to him now would be freedom, too, maybe for both of us. The tyranny of that memory, the weight of it, the “last encounter”—I could let go of its significance, its poetic hold on me, if I made it ordinary. In ordinariness, in now, things become free. Presence is unencumbered. We are most free when we act now. 

I get up. His back is turned to me. I reach out, tap him on the shoulder. He turns around mid-speech. I say, I’m so sorry to interrupt, but I had to say hi. Remember me? I hug him, and he stiffens like an automaton. The touch of those familiar hands eventually end up on my back. Cool finger pads, I can feel them through my t-shirt. Gorgeous hands, so expressive. Once upon a time, I used to look at them all day. Their very form gave me joy. I’ll never forgot them. “I’ll never forget you,” I must have told him at some point. 

“Seungwoo,” he’d stay, “wow, it’s really you.” “Dongpyo,” I called him now, but I used to call him _my little star._ “_Appa_,” he might have said in return. A slip of the tongue. But possibly not. “Seungwoo,” he said, remembering his companion. “This is M.” I’d shake hands. “Nice to meet you, M.” My attention, back to Dongpyo. “You look great.” “You too! “Coffee shop talk. “It’s been—what, four years?” “Yep.” If he were more generous, if he had moved on, if he hadn’t, he’d probably say, maybe, if he were feeling good that day, wanted to tease me like old times, “hey, weren’t we supposed to get in touch after your military service?” Hah. Yeah. Sorry, I’d say. Please tell me you’re doing well, I’d want to say. Absolve me. Please! I want to be forgiven, even now. But maybe this is all I can get. A hug, confirmation, a five-second look into your eyes, after four years. 

“You’ll have to forgive me,” he’d say. “We have some place to be.” 

_I_ have to forgive you? “Of course.” Could I say it? Could I say—

“_I_ have to forgive _you_? Surely it’s your forgiveness I’m after. It’s your forgiveness I crave. It’s your absolution I’ve been after all this time. Can I really do anything without it?” 

“You?” And suddenly we would both be up in the clouds. Cloud-world, both of us, feet planted on the tiles of the coffee shop. “I forgot about that a long time ago,” Dongpyo would say, chilly. My face, fallen. 

“Just kidding,” he quips, then turns gentle. “Of course. Of course I forgive you. I’ve always forgiven you.”

And he lets go of my hand. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continued in _21\. a little ugly_.
> 
> @_radishface on Twitter


	22. liar liar blood on fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Kim Wooseok met Park Jimin and she saw straight through him.

“You’re such a liar,” Jamie says, tipping back her head to down a shot of soju. “You’re such a liar, like everyone in this industry.”

Hangyul is slumped on the chair, already passed out. Seungyoun is on the other side of the room, winning a tidy hand of mahjong. You nudge Hangyul’s shins with the foot of your boot. Maybe he’ll wake up and there will be something else to laugh at. Instead, Jimin snickers at your awkwardness.

“Kim Wooseok!” She levies a shot at you. “If you don’t have something to say to that, then you have to _drink_.”

You shake your head and accept the cup she offers. A little of it spills out of the top and onto your hand. No, you think as you tip your head back too. She’s right. You’re a liar, just like everyone else. 

  
#

  
Seungyoun had invited you out. Seungyoun had invited Hangyul out, too. “Come,” he said, strapped into jeans far too large for him, shoes far too big for his feet. Jersey knit and a workman’s khaki jacket thrown over, glasses making his face comical, pristine. “You should come, Wooseok.” 

Seungyoun’s hair was two days unwashed and slicked back from its own oil. The volume made it stand up. Seungyoun pulled on a beanie. As if it would disguise him. All it did was cover the hair. Wooseok’s fingers itched to pull it off. Instead, he tapped at his mobile phone. No, no new messages. 

It was a rest night, wasn’t it? You needed your beauty sleep. But it was Seungyoun, and it had been a while since you had gone out on a Friday, and it was a rare Friday that you’d be going out with a friend (or two). See, Hangyul had already put on a sweatshirt. With his freshly washed hair he didn’t look like he was about to go out. He looked like he was about to go to bed. But that boyish sleepover energy hummed through him. He tried to contain it by shoving his hands in his pocket but it wasn’t enough. He couldn’t wait to go out. That energy, combined with Seungyoun’s, strangely contained, perhaps because Seungyoun didn’t want to pressure you into doing something you didn’t want to do, lately he’d been a little bit on eggshells around you, which really served you right after how you’d snapped at him. 

You were always snapping about something. There was something in you poised to snap. It came out, little elastic filaments coming loose one after the other. You thought about Jinhyuk. What was Jinhyuk doing tonight? 

You should come, Hangyul said, somewhat sincere. It was obvious he wanted to be with Seungyoun alone. Together, the two of them would have an entirely different time out. Rowdy, ruckus generated, rambunctious two boys. Bouncy ball bouncy castle kind of energy. You could feel the joy, potential. 

With you in the mix — 

You caught Seungyoun looking at you from the side of his eye. He was reaching for his phone, on the counter. Putting it in his pocket. He was moving slowly. Giving you time.

He wanted you to go. 

Why? 

Hm. 

“Where are we going?” You drawl. 

“It’s a place I used to go with my friends.” 

Is that who’s going to be there? 

“You’ll like them,” Seungyoun says eagerly. “There’s Jamie, and there’s K, and there’s—“

I know who’s in the group, you want to say, but catch your tongue. It’s fascinating, watching Seungyoun come to life just speaking their names. As if they haven’t been jealous of his success, as if things will be normal. 

And all of a sudden, your feel the compulsion to go. Right. Someone needs to protect him. His old friends are likely jealous. They’re likely ready to rip into his life, make him say things. Hangyul’s just a boy. He might look threatening but he can’t hold his own against seasoned independent artists who have cut their teeth with low ratings and zero play counts. They’ll ply him for information, get the juice on X1, they’ll—

“I’ll go,” you say. “It’ll be fun to see how you used to be.” 

Seungyoun pouts. “It’s not very different than how I am now.” 

“Jimin will be there, right?” You ask lightly. 

“Yep!” 

You’ve seen her perform. Decent singer. A raspy voice, pain in her soul. No face, though. Don’t tell that to her. 

“Give me a few minutes to get changed, then.”

“You can go in that,” Seungyoun says. 

You’re wearing a t-shirt, gym shorts, and flip flops. No, you don’t want this night to go that way. There’s something you want out of this, too. So you change into a pale sweater loose around your collarbones and jeans that hang straight, and wear your shoes with the lift in them. Slip on your glasses and look at yourself in the bathroom mirror. How tall would you be next to Seungyoun now? You crank yourself up onto your toes. No, his chin wouldn’t come to your head with this, now. But maybe the back of your skull. 

“Let’s go,” Hangyul whines, knocking at the door.

You all don your masks and head out into an autumn evening thick with the last of the summer.   
  


# 

  
“Jimin, this is Wooseok.” Seungyoun says. “Wooseok, this is Jimin.” You bow at a distance slightly and then spend a millisecond sizing each other up. She will probably say something first, you think. She knows it too. You can tell that she is more patient than Seungyoun, but still, she’s less patient than you. Exile is the best teacher of patience.

“So—my friend’s playing at M Bar,” K says. “Let’s get going, we can’t miss her set.” 

“We haven’t drunk yet.”

“We can drink there.” 

“I wanted to show Wooseok and Hangyul the mahjong parlor.” 

“Later, later!” 

The club is _Me Sober,_ antithetical to its name. The drinks are cheap and the lighting is nonexistent. Seungyoun buys one for you and you accept. Cold in your hand, flimsy plastic. Feels unsanitary, like someone has spit into it. You sip on it lightly, careful not to drink much. The DJ on right now is good, and you’re sober, holding your drink and drinking very slowly. There are others on the floor facing front. It’s technical music, the DJ’s mix layered and guttural, engine sounds and the cranking of machinery. Not quite drinking music. You like it. The electric noise pushes you to a more quiet place. The thrum of the venue pulses through your toes, the bass vibrating your spine. You feel untethered, unattached to anything. All you are is a channel for other people’s liveliness. 

Smoke lingers in the air. Some of it cigarette. Some hint of green, unfamiliar and faint. Then some sort of strawberry smell, mixed with the smoke. Can’t tell if it’s cologne, perfume, or the residue of a hookah bar. Something fresh too. The smell of mint, elderflower, juniper berries in cocktails. But this isn’t that kind of place. Something crunches under your shoe. No, this isn’t that kind of place. Must be someone’s perfume. Your fingers tap against your cup. 

You all face front and bob along. Seungyoun has closed his eyes. Hangyul, on the other hand, looks bored, but is trying to be interested. You mask a smile. The DJ is too intellectual. Hangyul wants to move, though, and puts his arms in the air in the attempt to dance. It’s nice that nobody cares. Nobody is looking. 

In Gangnam, you feel too seen. Everyone is looking, wondering what you’re up to. Here in the Me Sober club in Itaewon, nobody is looking. Well, everyone is looking at you to some degree. They will notice you. Maybe it’s the noticing that’s different. Noticing the clothes, the way you’ve styled yourself. But people here are practiced. They have developed an informed opinion right away. They will know from the cut of your clothes, the way you hold yourself, what you want to be and who you think you are. And then, and then they stop caring. 

And then, they move on. After all, everyone is here with friends. The people here are artists, here thronged in their small groups. You’re just another artist among them, notorious, but just an artist. There is no predatory, sexual intent here. There is only one couple on a date, pressed into each other shoulder to shoulder, arm against arm. 

She’s got her hair dyed blonde, gold coin earrings, thin chain of gold draped around her neck. It dips into her cleavage, made jousty by her push-up bra. A thin velvet camisole with spaghetti straps looks like it could be nudged off by gravity and angles if she simply leaned too far one way. She has slim arms. You wonder absently what her armpits look like. They’re probably clean-shaven, clean-cut like the rest of her. No seeing them tonight. She’s taking great care to keep her arms by her side to keep her breasts pushed into the center, where she is trying to draw her companion’s attention. He leans, lets himself be petted by her fingers through his hair, down his jaw. With every shrug of her shoulders she brings him closer into the cavern of her breasts. It’s very inviting for him, and he’s not trying to resist either. 

Him — he’s got an athletic build, good hair, youngish. They could be university students, but more likely they are professionals young in their career, from families with good money. Not out-of-towners. 

They kiss, and keep kissing. The noise grinds on. Here in the darkness, you feel invisible. The crowd gets thicker as more people arrive. Cloistered in the in-between spaces, you fold your arms in and take one leisurely sip at a time.

It’s nice.

A hand comes around your shoulders, and your heart leaps. It’s Seungyoun. 

“You doing okay?” 

You nod. 

“You don’t like your drink?” Seungyoun motions for you to drink faster. 

“Peer pressure doesn’t work on me.”

“What?” 

So your murmur doesn’t carry. You repeat yourself, this time louder. 

“So you won’t dance, either?” 

“And why would I be working right now?” 

“No no no,” Seungyoun yells in your ear. “_Non-professional_ dancing.” 

“I’m afraid I don’t know how to dance unprofessionally,” you retort. “You’ll have to show me.” 

He does. One flailing wiggle after another, the robot, the YMCA, and then the disco. With flair, each and every move. When he launches into Red Velvet’s Red Flavor choreography with extra-jelly knees, that’s when you start to laugh. 

“When did you learn that?” 

“Our lemon sunshine taught it to me.” 

“You have time to learn this?” 

“I make time for what’s important,” Seungyoun says, and chucks your chin before wheeling away, laughing. But your heart has already stopped.

Damn it. You get it restarted by downing the rest of your drink in one go. Seungyoun bounds back and you shove him your empty cup. “Get me another.” 

“Sir,” Seungyoun bows, and flounces off into the crowd.

Out of the corner of your eye, you notice Jimin watching you from the other end of the room.  
  


#

  
You all move onto a bar. You drink some more. Seungyoun whines that he wants to go to the mahjong parlor. K says there’s another set his friend is playing. Hangyul asks you if you’re hungry. He’s skipped dinner, so of course he’s hungry. 

You want to go home. Somehow, the novelty of being out has worn off. But what keeps you here is Seungyoun, vibrant and radiant and happy with his old friends. And every now and then he comes to you and asks if you’re all right, if you’re having fun, takes your hand. The more he drinks the looser his hands become, from looping around your shoulders to your arms, palms on your wrist, his fingers grabbing at yours. You raise yourself out from his grasp, you ply yourself away, and he comes crawling back, _look at this Kim Wooseok, look at him, coming out and barely drinking, Wooseok, why are you always so put together? Can someone tell me why this guy doesn’t crack?_

“He sure likes you, doesn’t he,” Jimin says to you when you get to the fifth bar. 

“He likes everyone,” you say. A line of rage bubbles to your vision like red. How dare she notice. You cool it down with a deep breath. Nobody should know. 

“It’s okay,” she says. “You like him too, after all.” 

“I see,” you say, taking another thin breath.

“I’m telling you just to see what your reaction is,” she says. 

“And?” 

“You’re boring, Kim Wooseok. I guess that’s why he likes you.” 

“I guess that’s why he likes me,” you repeat like an automaton. 

“I’m just teasing you.” 

“That’s fine,” you quip.

“Why’d you come out tonight if you were just going to be a stick in the mud?” 

You bristle. You down your drink. Across the room, Seungyoun catches your glare, your raised empty glass, and hops himself to the bar. 

Jimin laughs, like she knows everything. 

Then like lightning striking, the buzz hits you like a hammer. Your vision swims, doubles up, the world turns upside down and right side up in the blink of an eye, and from the cold, tight press of your diaphragm on the daily rage of living, something emerges. You know who you _don’t_ like? 

“Awww,” she says, and boops you on the nose. “I made Korea’s number two idol mad.” 

“I’m not an idol. I’m an _artist._”

You’re mortified as soon as you say it. 

“So you’re an artist, then,” Jamie cackles.

You want to bury your face in your hands. 

“Well, that’s good. For if art is to exist,” Jimin twists open a new bottle of soju, splashing it down her hands and taking a swig before handing it to you, messy, disgusting, gross, her flush clean down her engorged neck and reaching down her arms, mottled like poppies blooming in snow, “for any kind of aesthetic activity or perception to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable.” 

“What?” 

“Intoxication. Drink up, we’re all in this together, aren’t we? You and Seungyoun are just mildly more popular, that’s all.” 

Intoxicated, you are all the same. Nervously shredded beer labels, low hum of crowd sounds, old university friends, sunglasses of night, rose-colored glasses, laughs snorts promises, wagers, chips, jazz, neighbors, bold cocktails, first impressions, mismatched socks, time, a flame burning in a dark glass, people quoting Nietzsche. The night goes on, the beginning of songs, tears in beers, good listeners, chance meetings, salty snacks, illicit graffiti via sharpie in a bathroom, X$Y was here, a game of dice, maybe four, someone forgot their backpack, birthday songs on the balcony across the road, eavesdropping, thumb wrestling matches, Hangyul won every single one, sharp wit, cutting and even more acerbic as Wooseok gets drunker, Hangyul spilling a whole bottle of soju on his pants, crowd sounds, dirty jokes, and nobody, nobody noticing them. 

Around four in the morning, you make it to the mahjong hall. Jimin is curled into a couch, a happy drunk aggressive smile still plastered on her face. Somehow, over the course of the evening, Park Jimin has gotten it in her head that she has to tell everything to you. Perhaps it’s your quietude, your introversion that invites incessant speculation. Seungyoun, after all, is the same. 

“You don’t like me very much, do you.”

“To say the least.”

“Tell me more.” 

“You don’t know when to stop.”

“I learned from the best.”

“I should never have even told him to reach out to you after your scandal,” you say. “Then I never would have had to meet you.”

She’s silent for a moment. Perhaps you went too far. She wasn’t meant to know about that, and you slipped. 

“You really think I’m just like this? You think that lowly of me?” 

You give her a blank stare. 

“I’m only being an ass to you because Seungyoun and I had a bet on if I could crack you. After all, you’re so cool-headed on TV.” 

“Seungyoun and you had a—a _what?_”

Jimin holds a blank face for far too long before she doubles over in laughter, chaotic and mean. 

“Oh man,” she wheezes and whispers. “Oh man, your face right now. So betrayed. Oh man. What the fuck, you _believed_ me? Oh man, you must really like him. Oh man...” 

“I do not like him,” you shake your head so hard your glasses almost fly off.

“Liar.” 

Park Jimin. Smug, fat, bloated, red tomato of a face, waltzing around like she knows it all just because she’s been abroad and speaks English and is Seungyoun’s oldest friend and they grew up together making music. Stringy hair greasy on her head, she sweats very easily, doesn’t she? Every movement of hers clumsy and oafish and cantankerous, she really shouldn’t be an idol, foolish to think that a girl this ugly could be in the entertainment industry, no wonder her cover art is always illustrated, because who’d want to put that bitch face on a mug, much less an album, much less on stage—

Next to you, Hangyul snores. You kick him with your foot, but he doesn’t stir, only lets out a little whimper. You kick him again. 

“Admit it. You’re such a liar,” Jamie says, tipping back her head to down a shot of soju. “You’re such a liar, like everyone in this industry.”

“Fuck,” you seethe, wondering at the hot red rage in you, at the ogre in front of you, her red face and purple lips dense with spittle and alcohol, and you wonder why it feels good to look her in the face and despise her so openly.

“To everyone in the industry,” she says, raising her glass and as you sulk, yours too, fingers firm on your wrist. “Just you wait, pretty boy. They don’t just screw ugly girls like me. They’re gonna fuck you over, too.” 

Across the room, Seungyoun yells and flips over the mahjong table. The clattering of tiles is endless, and you close your eyes and let your head swim like foam on the tides.   
  


#

  
_And from the waves, Seungyoun, spray rolling off his chest, Poseidon from the sea, carries your sunbleached body back to the shore and breathes life into your corpse. _

_Lips to lips, air rolling into the dark cavern of your lungs.  
  
_

#  
  


“Did you have a good time?” 

In the taxi between the two of you, Hangyul dozes. His head rolls onto your shoulder, cleanwashed hair smelling now of smoke tickling your nose. You push Hangyul back onto Seungyoun, regretting it as you do so. 

Now Hangyul’s face is crested into Seungyoun’s collarbones without him even realizing the privilege. 

“I like your friends,” you say instead. The rage you wore earlier on your face this evening is leaving you. You miss it. You leave your hand, open-palmed and relaxed, on Hangyul’s thigh. His quadriceps, limp, radiate heat like a furnace. You dig your knuckles a little into his IT band and feel him squirm. 

Seungyoun laughs, eyes flickering to your docile, upturned hand. “Jimin wasn’t giving you too hard a time?” 

“Not at all.” 

“So we should do it again.”

“Maybe.” 

Close to home, Seungyoun’s fingers reach across Hangyul’s lap to ghost across your palm. Hangyul doesn’t wake, and you don’t resist. 

Outside, a thin line of dawn crests over the city.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To be continued in _25\. five tiny stitches_
> 
> Twitter: @_radishface


	23. the other cheek

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happened to Lee Kaeun.

This isn't what you expected your life to look like, but they say that things have a way of turning out for the best. At least this way you get to see your family often. When you were on the show, they took away your mobile phones and you were only allowed to talk to them if you could cry on demand. Thankfully, you and tears were never too far away from one another. 

That summer was so long ago. A new band has come in the wake of your ruin. 

_Don’t be like that,_ Yoonjin would tell you. 

_I’m just kidding,_ you’d reply with a smile.

You give your mother a kiss goodbye on her cheek. The trip from Seungsu-dong to Gangnam takes around forty-five minutes and with your facemask on nobody can tell who you are. The subway rumbles along on the train tracks and it's either that or they don't care. 

The life of an idol is like this, right? A brief spell in the sun and then darkness. That’s just how it is. You take your shot and sometimes you make it and more often than not, you don’t. 

The bakery down the street from Pledis which you used to visit as a trainee now employs you. Joji is the patissier. He is from Osaka and studied cakes in Lyon before migrating to Korea; a wild hand. He smiles a big smile at you. You exchange pleasantries in Japanese. Today’s special is a mango mousse in the shape of a mini pumpkin, with a strawberry jelly and a carmelized fig cookie at the center. “It’s themed, Kaeun_-san_,” Joji tells you. “The strawberry jelly is supposed to be blood. The fig cookie is the soul of the pumpkin. Spooky Halloween surprise!” The last notes are in sing-song and he looks expectantly at you.

“I’m not singing for you, Joji,” you say. 

“What if I bring my guitar?” 

“Even then.” 

It’s two weeks before Halloween. You wonder if you should do anything to decorate the cafe, make it appropriate for the season. But most of the clientele at this cafe are rich Gangnam ladies who care less about the cakes than they do their waistlines. They are happy to pay high prices for the ability to sit and converse with their other rich Gangnam lady friends. What do they care about Halloween, except that it’s another chance to dress well? And they all, you included, wear masks every day. There’s really no need for Halloween. 

_Just kidding,_ you tell yourself.

Sometimes you see an old colleague from time to time, or some of the existing trainees at Pledis who come and gawk at the overpriced cakes in the window. Your heart beats fiercely when you see them but it doesn’t show on your face. Because you don't show up to practice anymore because there’s nothing for you to practice for and there's no new music video coming your way. Everyone knows this and yet. It's humiliating and you might have suffered less but at least you are close. Close enough that when the studios close up for the day you're still allowed to enter. Though you haven't gone in a few weeks now. You're too busy, too busy with your front-of-house duties in the shop, too tired at the end of the day, might as well just go home along the rumbling train tracks back to the one-bedroom apartment you share with your mother in Seungsu-dong, waiting for the editor to finish editing your music video, waiting for Stone to post it on their YouTube channel, waiting, waiting. 

Waiting.   
  


  
#

  
  
“Kaeun-ah, what do you think of this job?”

On the couch, your mother is perusing the paper for job postings, like an old lady. You swallow your resentment and put away your book. 

The job is for a cafe manager right in this neighborhood. You’ve walked past it a few times as it’s become built up. The interiors look beautiful. Dark wood and the kind of furniture straight out of an interior decor magazine. It looks like it’ll be a nice place. And nobody you know from Pledis lives in Seungsu-dong. 

“I’m sure they’re looking for someone much more experienced than me.” 

“You’re smart, tall, and beautiful! That’s all you need. As long as you’re taller than others, they’ll listen to you!”

Your mother is trying to make you laugh. That’s what she used to say when you were teased for your height back in middle school. You were the tall, gangly girl. You dared not speak up because you already stood head and shoulders above the rest. Why call attention to yourself? 

“I don’t know if it’s the right place,” you say. “Plus, it will be so far from the Pledis in case something—”

*In case what?* 

“Kaeun,” your mother says, but leaves it at that.   
  
  
  
#

  
  
_Did you see this?_ Yoonjin texts you. _I can’t believe it._

You can believe it. 

_Police begin investigation into MNet_. 

You don’t even have to read the article. Your hands shake as you put your phone back into your pocket and wipe down the tables. 

Yuna comes in after the lunch rush. The executive assistant to CEO Han Sung Soo, Yuna is always the one securing everyone’s drink orders and managing birthday gifts for everyone in Han Sung Soo’s family. You vaguely recall that Han Sung Soo’s wife’s birthday is in October. 

“These are the specials,” you said, pointing at the pumpkins in the display window. “Mango mousse with a strawberry jelly.” 

“His wife doesn’t like mangoes,” Yuna says. This stings you like a wasp and your face crumples before you can stop it. And Yuna sees, and as she sees your face she takes a step back, and then forward. Small and telling, and you’re humiliated, just humiliated—

“But oh, um Kaeun, I’ll—I’ll take one. It looks wonderful, delicious really.” 

Your hands feel leaden and cold as you wrap up the pastry in a box. With a clean smile you present it to her. 

“See you around,” Yuna says. 

“Bye then,” you say, your hands frozen in a still wave. 

  
  
#

  
  
“Kaeun_-san_?” 

“Just taking a little break.” 

“_Wakatta_, Kaeun_-san_. And normally I wouldn’t bother you, but there’s a group now out front.” 

“Okay,” you say, your voice shaking. You don’t look at him as you brush past him to go back inside. 

_Police begin investigation into MNet_. Your life unfolding before you in half an hour. Of course Lee Chaeyeon deserved to be in the group. Almost as much as you. You’re too gangly, too old, too tall. It was clear from the moment Nako was voted in that you’d have no place. It was true, wasn’t it, all of it. The screentime allegations, the keeping quiet, the praying and the hoping and none of it mattering anyway. 

Now the only thing matters is getting all the tea services out at the same time, making sure that nothing is spilled, that the tables and floors are cleaned, that the store is properly locked up, that you greet customers with a smile, leave them with smiles on their faces. Your world, smaller, in stark relief, and your emptiness fenced in by the daily necessities of your job; you don’t have to think about yourself, or what you’ve gone through, what mattered to you then. 

Six-o-clock comes and Joji asks if you want to go to the park. Seoul Forest, he says. I’ve never been there since I moved to Korea, was thinking to go after work today. Would you like to come with me? And why not, you think to yourself, it’s on my way home. So you go to Seoul Forest and take in the trees as the last rays of sun hover in the sky. He purchases deer pellets for you and you wince and laugh as the rough scrape of tongue meets your palm. Joji screeches when the deer comes for his pellets but holds himself valiantly against the fence to feed them. You laugh. You’re meant to laugh. You know what this is and yet you don’t feel badly about it. Afterwards, he smells his hand, you smell your hand, and he smells your hand. His hand smells better, he says. I don’t know, you say. He offers his hand for you to smell. You take the bait and lean in. He chucks your chin. You’re really pretty, he says. And you wait for him to kiss you but he doesn’t. He sighs to himself. Look, he says. It’s not like I haven’t thought about it. But we are colleagues, and—I don’t want to take advantage of you.

You badly want to be kissed and not think. It’s not taking advantage if you’re willing, right? But you can’t even muster the energy to say that. You can’t even muster the energy to not look dejected. So Joji takes your deer-licked hand in his deer-licked hand and you walk along in silence. 

“Why were you crying earlier today? You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. But I can listen if you want.” 

You shake your head but it’s not a no. 

Further along there is a white bridge that spans the marsh of the park. Joji clears off the cobwebs and spiders and dust from the railings and you both lean over and look at the cranes wading through the mud. And Joji turns his head and simply looks at you.

“I know life is unfair,” you say, when you can’t take the weight of his gaze anymore. “But it still hurts.” 

Joji nods, and just like that, you begin to cry. You didn’t think your tears would be so near today, but here they are. He loops an arm around your shoulders as you heave your sorrows into the mud below. When you straighten up again, you realize that you’re the same height he is. 

“I’m sorry for crying,” you say. 

“Don’t apologize,” he says. “Say _thank you_ instead.” 

“Thank you, Joji_-kun_.”

He blushes at that, face turning near purple in the growing dim. 

You walk out of the forest and into Seungsu-dong. He sees the cafe that’s being built up. You tell him that they are hiring a cafe manager, your mother showed you the posting the other day. You walk around the building and in the back, the door is ajar—construction work out for dinner—and he opens the door wide. 

_Joji, no_, you say, _we’re not allowed_, but he waves his hand and tells you to come in. On the plastic-wrapped chairs you sit in the darkness. The smell of dust and concrete hits your nose. You’re on the edge of your seat, literally.

“This is going to be a nice place,” Joji whispers, sounding very conspiratorial, like he’s surveying the place. “Yeah, I can see you being the manager here.” 

Your ears are ringing with the sound of silence, straining to catch any sound of anyone else here in the building. You swear there are footsteps upstairs.

“We’re not allowed,” you repeat. You can feel a sheen of sweat on your forehead, your fingertips cold with anxiety. And Joji’s just sitting there, leveling a black-eyed gaze at you, teeth glinting in the darkness as he grins. 

“Life is full of things that are not allowed,” he replies. “But that doesn’t stop other people from getting what they want.”   
  
  


#

  
  
_Can you believe this?!_ Yoonjin texts you. _Agencies treated Director Ahn Joon-young to entertainment services at adult establishments. _

You can believe it. There are so many girls that want to sing and dance for a living, who imagine themselves on stage. There are so many stages in the world. 

_Good luck,_ Joji texts you, followed by three lines of guitar emojis. 

The windows and doors of the cafe are covered by a layer of opaque film. It went up a few days ago; likely to deter thieves and break-ins. Last week you and Joji had barely made it out before someone came running down the stairs. Today you knock on the door, and the silhouette of someone appears briefly, as if they’ve been waiting. You switch your phone into silent mode and tuck it away in your purse. 

The door opens an inch. “Lee Kaeun? For the cafe manager position?” 

“That’s me,” you say.   
  



	24. a little ugly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Foreword**: _where you might go if not for here_ has been written in the spirit of debunking idol worship and to help readers consider idol culture more critically. Please discontinue reading if you prefer to see your idols only in a positive light or if the topic of underaged relationships discomforts you.
> 
> **Disclaimer**: All incidents portrayed in this series are fictional and are based on fictional interpretation of events.

  
  


You wake up with a start. In your dreams you have done the unthinkable. 

You, sitting at Dongpyo’s feet, so filled with desperate longing and even more desperation not to let it show, realized that it was a dream. And in that moment, treacherous thoughts emerged one by one. Would it be enough that the crowd saw you? Would it be enough to be seen by the masses that claimed to love you? 

Could you, perhaps, in this fake world, be seen, consumed, loved, admired by Son Dongpyo? 

You looked up at him then, hoping that he’d be looking at you, but even in your fake world where everything could happen without consequence he was distant, eyes fixed on something else. 

So you woke up, heartbroken by your own treachery, your own lack of self-discipline, and the callousness that Dongpyo showed to you in your fake world. You got up. Let you do something other than think about t his any more, as if every half-baked stutter would lead you one inch closer to enlightenment. It was half past five in the morning and no one else in the dorms would be up.

You stripped to nothing and turned on the shower and looked at yourself in the mirror as the fog seeped out from behind the curtains. Dates circled in your head as you turned to soft focus. 

Give it one more weekend, you thought. Yes, you and Dongpyo had your falling out yesterday. You’d suffer for it dearly today. But after this you’d both be over it. By this weekend. By next month. By the end of next year. One by one the days would pass and you’d tell yourself this was normal. And maybe with time it would be, and you would come to accept it as easily as you did your schedule, your destiny as a performer, the pain in your feet and the hurt in your limbs and the fact that you could never go home the same again. 

You got in the shower and the rain slipped over your hair and your eyes and you let it pummel you. Life was just moving on, wasn't it? You couldn’t let this brat kill you or dissolve you. You couldn’t let yourself be waxed into a premature, poetic coma. You couldn’t live this way forever, thinly hid behind a veil. At some point you’d have to come clean. 

Dongpyo hid nothing. A taunt, a tease, come get me, come save me, save me from myself, or save me from you. “Like _appa_.” The only things you could hear from him, the only things he was allowed to say. And to him, sweetheart, turtledove, precious little baby bird, the sense that everything will be solved, your giddy, fragile optimism that you might be able to sing my way out of this place, this place that is a hole of your own making and perhaps was always there. 

You just wanted for the hole to be filled, and yet you could not let it go, for you’d known it your whole life. 

No, you thought, getting out of the shower, you didn’t want to hide. And yet it was too much to ask for it outside the stage. At least you had the privilege of being on stage, where you were just you and no one else. Where you didn’t have to be locked up. Where voice meets the stage was the truth. 

Every true, every vibrato, legato, fermata you’d put into a song, it was for him. 

Son Dongpyo, your hands shake as you sang him into your life. Was everything before you just an elaborate scheme to meet him? Cruel fate. What hell. Sure, Dongpyo had no strength in his arms and no bite to his words, yet everything hurt anyway.

How many mornings had gone this way? Slumber followed by devastation. I know, I think, therefore I am. If you ever told him “I know” or he ever said it to you, “I know,” wouldn’t this beautiful thing finally be seen? 

A cough wracks your body and phlegm comes up. You spit it into the sink and proceed to brush your teeth. One by one each tooth receives the care of your electric toothbrush. You feel brittle. No, you don’t want to be known. If you are known inside out then the other thing for which you want to be known and seen—you and your songs—will be destroyed. 

When Dongpyo laughs, you wish for nothing but your life to rest upon this brittleness. When Dongpyo smiles you want to relinquish the shared humanity that all men before you have suffered the same, you want to believe you are special. When Dongpyo clutches your arm you want not to be the symptom of some recent cultural malady, you want to relax, to give up. You do not want to do the backbreaking work to understand your world and your place within it. All you want is to surrender and let your feeling consume you totally. 

You spit out the foam in your mouth and look back upon your brittle self in the mirror. Bags and dark circles have set in under your eyes, and there are tiny lines around your mouth. You see these lines and let yourself think the word that has been in your head since you first met Dongpyo, the word you have been avoiding because it can’t possibly be you, the word that entered your emotional lexicon to terrify you, the word that you pray to God to wash yourself of, the word that bridges your manic fever dreams and fake worlds and this one, because how could the divine tenderness that you feel toward someone be summarized in such an ugly, despicable—how could you possibly be—

But I’m not, you protest, your eyes wild and ugly, I’m not, I’m not, I’m not. 

  
  
#

Dongpyo tries to make amends for yesterday. He wants to talk, you can tell front he way he approaches you, reticent and wounded. All it would take is for Dongpyo to undo you with two words: “I know.”

Those words would stop the planets and stars, relieve you of your burden, allow you to surrender to the entire sacrelige for which you have been yearning. That it is not the sun which is the center of the universe but Dongpyo at the center of yours. 

And what then?

What then, indeed.

You find a reason to leave every room, every conversation. You are not sure where the day goes. It hurts. 

#


End file.
